


The Heart Remembers

by FireReverie



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Jonerys Endgame, Past and Present, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 53,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25951432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireReverie/pseuds/FireReverie
Summary: Two monarchs meet again after many years to discuss pending issues. Jon as King of the Seven Kingdoms and Daenerys as Queen of the Free Cities of Essos. Can past mistakes weigh the continuity of the present and hamper the prospect of a future?
Relationships: Arya Stark & Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen
Comments: 296
Kudos: 371





	1. The King and The Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Jon and Dany deserved better and luckily there is some ambiguity in the ending that can be exploited. 
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> 
> P.S. Daario Naharis appears in this story but he will not be Daenerys' lover. I clarify that beforehand because I am aware of the outrage his apparition causes every so often.

**"The King and The Queen"**

**Braavos, Essos - 316 After Aegon's Conquest**.

Over the years, and especially when one only goes through life expecting to see the sun rising in the morning, the question arises as to what would it have been if instead of the decisions we made, we had opted for those we did not choose.

Jon Snow was a man given to ramblings and the constant stream of thoughts that abstracted him from the ordinary world. His upbringing as the bastard son of a great lord had turned him into a solemn and serious person, prone to a submissive attitude if those who incurred him were people he held at the height of idealization. Of course, the collapse of these ideals came at a heavy price.

Questioning was also a way to review his mistakes and learn. There was a time that - he still does not know why - but he had become so absorbed in unanswered questions that these lessons had passed by, while he was left numb watching everything collapse around him. The damage that had been done was so great that he could only patch it up. He didn't want to be that man again - and he would never be again.

A throat clearing shook him out of his thoughts. He blinked several times to focus on Ser Davos's whitish-blue eyes. His old friend and adviser kept an earnest expression on his face.

"Do not zone out, again, Your Grace," he scolded him as he would do to a child. "You are no longer an impressionable young man."

The old man shifted with the help of his cane to stand by his side, the two of them looking out over a garden of flowers and water fountains that was colorful and full of life. This was not the object of his fixation, rather the memories that came to him of hot sunsets and windy nights in Highgarden. Braavos weather was much more humid which meant this garden was most likely artificial, like a semblance of a true dream of spring. Maybe it was just him wanting to see a connection where there wasn't, but Jon couldn’t help it.

A stream of cool air came from the long gallery corridors and he wheeled off in the direction where two large doors screeched open. The small figure of a woman came out. A woman who was barely more than a girl the last time he'd seen her. Jon turned and moved as fast as he could into his little sister's arms. Arya did the same and both met each other in an embrace they never thought would ever be again.

Sobbing escaped their chests in unison, her feet levitating on the air.

"I've missed you," it was the first thing he told her with his face buried in her neck. She smelled something fresh and marine like the salty breeze from the harbor.

"I've missed you too," she sobbed, adding with a peal of sad laughter, "You are still taller than me."

Jon lowered Arya to the ground to look at her closely. He pulled away to cradle her face, facing the same countenance of juvenile and huge stormy gray eyes.

"Aye," he said, his eyes traveling down her body where she wore a belt the last time. She was clad in a blue gown and no weapon to be found near her. "Do you still have your Needle?"

"Of course," she reassured him, wiping a tear away with the back of her finger. She sniffed. "Now I can use much more than that."

He nodded, smiling proudly.

"I’ve never had a doubt about it," he commented. Then, he looked up to their surroundings, repressing a sigh of contemplation. "This is the oddest place where we could have met again, don't you think?" 

"I'd like to think it was always meant to happen."

Jon blinked away, unable to see her at her eye. A twinge in his chest reminded him of all those things he wished to forget sometimes.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save her," he began to say but Arya cut him off.

"It wasn't your fault, Jon."

"Do you believe so? I don't," he said almost on a whimper.

This time it was Arya who reached up with both hands to his face to reassure him. He closed his eyes.

"I can't blame you. I will never blame you.”

When he opened his eyes again, he found her staring at him with candor. It was the first time in many years that someone had looked at him with more than pity.

Soon Arya turned her attention on the other person that was there.

"Ser Davos," she greeted him too, walking toward him, "You are still alive."

Jon also turned around. Ser Davos let out a scoff.

"I'm very much impressed ya’ still in one piece, child!"

Arya laughed.

"It seems to me that the seas are going to spit us out before swallowing us."

"I'm happy about that."

When the melancholy of the reunion and the lightness of the jokes had disappeared, he knew that now it was time to face the reason for being there. His face fell and Arya became serious, knitting her brows sympathetically.

"She is in there," she revealed, chin up pointing out at the doors from where she came from. Then she cleared her throat and folded her hands in her back, standing upright. "She is ready to receive you, Your Grace."

Jon swallowed hard.

"You don't have to call me that."

"But that's what you are. The King of the Seven Kingdoms. Sorry it took us all this time to finally understand it."

They began to make their way to the doors, his guards surrounding them while the palace guards stood tall and vigilant.

"I've never wanted it," Jon said with a low voice, "But it is what it should be, I suppose."

"You are not the first that tells me so," Arya agreed, with a tight smile. He breathed in thinking what else did she know. "The last time we met, it was you who brought her. Don't you think it's kind of funny how things turn now?”

He hesitated when they reach the damned doors. Jon looked at Davos over his shoulder and his Hand understood he needed space. The guards stepped back.

"I don't know what I should tell her," he confided, finally. 

Too long had passed, not long enough to turn everything he felt into distant memories. It was somewhat ironic how the passing of the years had never diminished the intensity of the memories of those days.

"I don't believe that you came all this way without a speech prepared. Not for a second time–”

"I _do_ know what I will tell her,” he clarified.

Arya understood.

"It's not something I know either. I'm so sorry,” she said, "We aren't confidents as sisters or even as friends but she trusts me and I trust her.” She stepped in front of him, looking straight into his eye. "I know she has a good heart. _As you do_."

He shook his head.

"I don't think she believes the same.”

Arya twitched her lips, eyes staring blankly at the void beyond him. She knew something he didn’t, Jon was aware. She must know much more than he will ever know.

She regained her composure and straightened, backing a few steps behind him.

"There's only one way to find out, I'm afraid," she softly said. "I'll be right here."

* * *

Daenerys found the lilac orbits of her eyes in the mirror and stilled them there for a moment as her maid's soft hands combed the loose waves of her short, silver hair right above her shoulders. She had never left it long again, not even when she had already overcome the great victories of her past life, because the great defeat that had cost her first mane still seemed insurmountable for her. This look suited her better, she too believed. It reminded her of her brother Viserys. Not the abusive relative he became in the end and who died wearing his precious golden crown but that loving older brother she came to understand better only when her family's madness had caught up with her as well.

"Will you wear your crown today, Your Grace?" Nary asked.

Daenerys shook he head. For some reason wearing a crown in front of the person who took away the last one didn't feel like a victory but an invitation to try again. Was it really a triumph to expose oneself like this? Normally she wouldn't have cared what they think of her. She had long since abandoned any veil of modesty. But Jon Snow was someone who had disposed her of that self-confidence she bragged about that first time they met. The victory was his, she knew, because even after everything that had happened, she couldn't bring herself to retaliate against him or against his family. Not even the blood they shared was as strong as that invisible bond that bound her to him.

The sudden appearance of Daario Naharis in front of her, sitting on the edge of the mirror table startled her.

"What will the allies across Essos think of the formidable Dragon Queen when they learn that you received your killer so warmly?"

Daenerys shot him a sharp look.

"He’ll be not the first traitor I treat with such kindness," she replied.

Daario laughed.

"In my defense, I proved myself. Several times. I keep doing it."

She looked at him seriously without answering. With abandonment and loneliness came the realization that she could no longer depend on emotional ties to rule and accomplish her goals. She didn't care in the least about Daario, but if there was something he provided it was that constant reminder of never trusting too much even in the own shadow.

He was more like a token of those old, long-gone days.

The door to her chamber opened. Arya Stark walked in without much ado, the guards recognized who was friend or foe.

"Your Grace," she greeted her usual upright posture that Daario used to scoff at. "My brother is waiting."

Daario sneered.

"Let him wait."

Arya's face didn't flinch.

"Excuse me, are you Your Grace?"

"Go meet him while I wait for them in the Throne Room," Daenerys interrupted before the sharp exchange could end in a knife duel like other times. Arya bowed and turn on her heels. “And Arya,” Dany called her, gulping the lump on her throat, "Nothing of meddling in issues that do not concern you."

Even from her back, Daenerys could see her stiffen. She couldn't do more than warn her.

“Very well,” she said, standing up and looking at herself in the mirror once more.

Nothing in her appearance was an invitation to reminisce about old times, rather it reached out to a new beginning. One in which they could leave the past behind and preferably continue walking forward without looking back. Alone, each one on their own.

He only needed his peace. She did want to see him at least one last time. Again, as King and Queen, both had something the other craved for.

* * *

Jon's eyes first settled on the floor, slowly sliding down to a raised marble platform until he reached legs clad in simple dark breeches. 

_"I favor them because I'm always on the run,"_ she had said to him at his question. The fleeting memory of a conversation in the privacy of a cabin came unintentionally. Was she still on the run? He wondered.

"Your Grace, Queen of the Free Cities of Essos, Daenerys of House Targaryen," said a thick voice, coming from a spokesman who was a tall, stocky man with an Essossi.

From there, his eyes could not keep avoiding going further up, where stood gracefully as the last time he’d seen her, the woman he loved –the woman he killed.

He zoned out. 

* * *

She stared at her boots absently for a long moment, even as she heard doors open, footsteps entering the room, and her own name in the mouth of Zaodr, who served as her royal spokesperson. She had one in every free city, never again a person recited her titles as Missandei used to do. She lost Missandei and she lost her titles. Today, this was a mere formality.

Her hands were folded in her lap, on top of the cotton fabric of her blue coat. Her mother's ring was still on her finger –she couldn't deny herself that– but she had long since disposed of that other one of the flames of a dragon. She didn't even use motif on her wardrobe anymore. All that seemed so vain, so far away from who she was nowadays. 

"His royal highness, King Jon of the Seven Kingdoms," another voice replied causing her to finally look up and face her assassin's eyes. Her blood, her lost love.

It had been an irony that after facing unimaginable enemies, this was the scenario that chilled her blood the most. Who could blame her? after all, here is the only person who had succeeded where others had failed.

Daenerys took a deep breath, relaxed her shoulders, and smiled kindly.

"Thank you for traveling so far. I hope the seas weren't too rough."


	2. The Lone Wolf and The Lost Dragon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your comments and kudos.

** "The Lone Wolf and The Lost Dragon" **

** Mountains of the Morn, Essos – 307 After Aegon's Conquest **

Daenerys strode into her tent knocking the flap open and out of her way. She hissed at the sudden sting that the move prompted, the cut in her ribs throbbing. She removed her armor and checked that the tunic underneath was stained with fresh blood. What was the point of wearing these heavy and ridiculous things if she was going to end up hurt anyway? She thought to herself.

Sitting on a bench as she listened to the healers coming after her, she wiped away a bead of sweat that almost fell on her left eye. She was hurt, dirty, and tired, yet she preferred it that way rather than being in the quiet of ordinariness. Here amidst the war, her anger made sense and the harm of her skin forestalled the baneful power of the madness haunting her mind. 

_Here_ she belonged.

Dany allowed herself to be cleaned and bandaged by Olea, an old healer who repeatedly tended to her wounds as she reproached the foolish Dragon Queen for being so reckless. Well, it's war, Daenerys found herself wanting to reply but instead she chose silence because there was nothing she could say that could put Olea's mind at ease. She was one of the few people who genuinely cared for her, of that Dany was certain. 

The flap of her tent rattled again when someone entered. It was Daario Naharis. Daenerys glanced at him with certain disdain before refocusing on the pain in her body.

"Your Grace," he came in chanting. She never got used to the eccentric look he wore in those days, with his hair and beard dyed blue and his mustache gold. A golden tooth gleamed in the space left after Drogon's tail sent him down the mountain at her command that one time.

"What do you want?" she grunted. 

"Make you some company," he attempted to jest. She only asserted her usual grumpiness by sending him off.

"Actually," he said, standing still, "Our men spotted a ship stalking our fleet. It turned out to be adrift."

"There's a thousand different ships that go adrift every now and then. Nothing new."

When there was no immediate response, Dany looked up to see him. He suddenly had a serious look.

"This one has a wolf on her sail."

* * *

Dany swallowed hard and took a deep breath as she stared at the sleepy face of the girl who was resting on a stretcher in her army's wounded camp. Her pulse was racing and her hands opened and clenched into fists. _Arya Stark_. 

Dany had many questions swelling in her mind. How had she gotten to this side of the world and what were the chances that she would end up here exactly? If she had decided a few years ago that she had nothing left to do on the west side of this world, it was precisely to avoid any contact with those who had thrived with her misfortune. Most of all, Daenerys wanted to forget Westeros forever, even if she could never erase those dark memories. It filled her with despair that this large piece would come back to haunt her and a strong impulse in her chest told her to get rid of it.

"Was she hurt?" she asked the chief healer. 

"I don't think so," he answered. "Her woman's part is untouched and the men in the boat are all dead. I think she killed them all before they could hurt her."

"Do you know her?" Daario came forward with the question. 

"Her name is Arya Stark," Dany responded, still looking blankly at the girl's face.

" _Stark?_ Like the people who betrayed you?" he sounded outraged. "We should send her in pieces back to Westeros–"

Daenerys quickly turned to her commander with a sharp look upon her face.

"If someone touches this girl, it becomes Drogon's food," she warned and with a last look toward Arya, she stepped out of that place.

She made sure to go a long distance before summoning Drogon.

Involuntary sobs hit her throat and rumble from her mouth. Salty tears wet her cheeks and the physical pain was again overshadowed by the strong sense of emptiness and helplessness. She threw herself on her knees to the earthy ground, clutching the short strands of her silver hair.

Her hand went to the dagger at her belt, the dagger he had given her when he took her life. 

_I hate them all_ , she thought. _I hate them all immensely. I want to burn them all_. But just like last time, Daenerys knew that would only lead her to the same place again. And all she had at that moment was pure anger, one in which she could only waste herself away and live on it.

* * *

Daenerys returned a fortnight later after the city they were sieging had surrendered to her army and with the help of the coercion of Drogon. She thought that by then, Arya Stark would have left, having left orders for such thing to happen. But as soon as Arya noticed the dragon banners, and had questioned who was in command, she couldn't force herself to leave without first checking with her own eyes.

Both hands of the girl who had managed to kill the Night King were seized with iron chains as several guards witnessed the meeting between the Dragon Queen and Arya Stark of Westeros.

"You should be dead," the girl said, staring straight into Daenerys' eyes and always keeping a calm demeanor.

"We are all dying, Arya Stark. We just don't realize yet," Dany replied, equally unshaken. 

With the days and the battles had come the calm and the slow but certain realization that she could overcome this obstacle after having survived worse hardships. Dany wasn't afraid of Arya.

"He let you live," then she concluded, wrongly. 

"No. He didn't," she made this clear. 

"So, you were brought back then."

Arya was not asking questions as there was no other answer to that situation. The dead are not supposed to live again. They were not supposed to meet again.

Dany nodded and ordered her guards to release her.

"I have no intention of hurting you. Don't force me to do it," Daenerys warned, walking toward the entrance of the small room where Arya was staying. "When you recover, one of my ships will take you to the ports of Yi Ti. There you will be on your own."

"What are you doing?" Daenerys heard her asking but she didn't bother to answer.

The past must be left behind.

* * *

"There is only one dragon on your banner."

The past did not want to stay where it belonged, Daenerys concluded when Arya stormed her tent in the same way that she used to appear everywhere without much consideration as she remembered Jon ever mentioning her. It was also how she managed to deliver the killing blow to the Night King.

As for Arya, it was difficult for her to take the offer from the very person who had indiscriminately burned thousands of innocents. She had sat in the port to see the activity of her army and verified that Daenerys was indeed acting in her right mind. So far.

Arya felt she needed to satisfy her curiosity, and most of all, make sure she wasn't letting go of a potential threat to her family.

From her place at her desk, Daenerys sighed and leaned back in her chair to look Jon Snow's little sister in the eye.

"The three dragons symbolized Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys once. Throughout the history of my house, there were almost always those who represented those three dragons. Even when I was alone, there were my children. Now there is only one dragon. And it is only me."

"There is still one more dragon," Arya added.

Daenerys smirked.

"Jon is a dragon what you and I are lions."

"You didn't give him time to explore that chance."

"It wasn't me who put a dagger through his heart."

_Then, it is true_ , Arya thought, pacing the place the Dragon Queen called hers. There was little there that could serve as a hint for her to read the person she was at that moment.

"You left him no choice," Arya said, brow furrowed, "Is this how you want to be remembered?"

"I do not understand what you mean."

Arya pointed at the dark fabric hanging in one corner. There was only one red dragon on it. Or rather, the dragon had only one head now.

Dany's eyes fell on the image in question and she remembered that day, a few moon turns after her resurrection when she traveled to Pentos to visit the place where everything had started for her, a lonely hill from where she looked west and decided that that was no longer the place for her or Drogon. To both Viserion and Rhaegal, she lost them in the water, so she threw both heads from her brooch and left one intact.

_It was just me and Drogon, now_ , she thought to herself back then. _One dragon, one head, one heart._

"This implies that House Targaryen no longer exists," Arya said almost startled. 

"House Targaryen is no more," Daenerys stated, standing up and holding hands in front of her. "I want to be remembered as the Mother of Dragons who rose unscathed from a pyre with three dragons and went city to city annihilating slavers and freeing slaves. At least here. Westeros will say that I was my father's daughter, the mad queen, killed by her own lover."

"It seems that Jon’s crime bothers you more than your own. Why? Wouldn't you have done the same?"

"Not," Dany was blunt. "I would not have murdered Jon. You see Arya, perhaps you have never felt it because you are very young still, and much stronger than I ever was, but there is something that I never had and that I thought I had with him that was certain and true. Love blinds us and it's a weakness. Do you know who knows that very well? Your sister Sansa."

"What does Sansa have to do with all this?"

  
"I told her that Jon mattered more to me than the Iron Throne. Guess what she did with that."

Suddenly something stirred in Arya's mind, turning her calm appearance into the hint of guilty doubt. She doesn't recall Sansa sharing that with her at any point, always arguing that Daenerys would eventually become a threat to Jon and the North.

The flapping of Drogon's wing sounded loud between them. Arya looked up and Daenerys returned to her seat, calmly.

"You need to go. Now."

  
"Why?"

  
"Why what?"

  
"You killed thousands of innocents in an outburst. Why let me go? Why let us all go?"

This was the thing Arya came to find out. Why would someone like her still live if she had proven to be a danger to the world? That is why Jon had killed her. Not this person sitting behind a desk, explaining that her only retaliation was to modify the blazon of her House. No. Arya didn't fall for that for a moment.

  
"Because by hurting you, or your siblings, I'll be hurting Jon," the Dragon Queen responded, looking into her eyes seriously.

  
"And why does that matter to you?"

Honestly, Daenerys used to ask herself the same question. Did she love him still? Probably yes, otherwise it would be easy to go and kill him. But if it was love, then it was something destructive that had consumed the only person who had ever truly loved. In this sense, Dany liked to think that there was still something pure about her that was this. And she would not allow Jon and his ungrateful, cruel and selfish family to take it from her as they had already taken everything else. Not that. Not this last trace of her person that remained.

  
"Because at least I care," she replied. 

The guards entered immediately after and took Arya away. 

* * *

Arya knew that the way back home was not an option. She wasn't even halfway there when her crew made the stupid decision to riot. She decided to accept the trip to Yi Ti, and from there to see where chance took her. However, first, she had to find a way to let her siblings know what she had discovered.

_Bran must know_ , she thought, still sitting in the harbor, watching the ships come and go. Everything seemed ridiculously peaceful, far from how it had all ended in Westeros. 

She decided to write three letters. 

* * *

**Castle Black – 308 After Aegon's Conquest**. 

Jon trailed his steps into the mess of Castle Black, nodding in greeting to some northern soldiers he barely remembered from another life. His sister or cousin, the Queen in the North, rushed to her feet when she saw him approaching. He stopped a few steps away and stared at her figure. She continued to look regal and delicate as her lady mother had been, although there was a certain severity in her countenance that her experience through hardships had helped her acquire and for which Jon admired her very much despite all the discontent she had brought him.

"Your grace," he saluted her with a stiff smile that did not meet his eyes. "What can I do for you?"

Sansa hesitated a second before throwing herself into his arms in an embrace that he received a bit surprised before finally accepting. This was how it should be, he supposed, even though his heart was not there anymore, no matter how hard he forced it to. The only person in this world that could bring him joy would be Arya but she was not here in probably he would never see her again. 

Sansa pulled away, sobbing a little.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that," she apologized, walking a few steps back. Only then did Jon notice the crown she was using. Two wolves uniting.

"No problem," he told her sincerely, sitting down after her to start the conversation.

Jon knew something important deserved this visit instead of the usual informants who used to come a few times a year. Not that he was here too long to know, ranging the true north most of the time or staying with the Free Folk just so he wouldn't have to know about the Seven Kingdoms anymore.

"We heard from Arya," Sansa told him bluntly. "She is alive. In Yi Ti apparently."

Luckily, she said it so fast that it wasn't in him to assume that something bad had happened.

"I'm glad to hear that."

"And something else."

From Sansa's expression, Jon knew that it would be something serious or that it would imply something bad for them.

"At first there were rumors about it but they seemed like stories. I didn't want to take it seriously." She pulled a piece of sealed paper out of her heavy fur coat. "Mine said not to worry and the truth is that I would not know that you are by my side."

Jon watched as her gloved fingers closed on the object as if wanting to let it go.

"Sansa, what is happening?" he asked suddenly, forgetting that she was a queen and probably calling her by her name was not appropriate.

"Before I give you this, I need you to tell me something."

He began to get impatient.

"What is it?"

Sansa put a hand in his and held it as if she wanted to reassure him but it had the opposite effect as he knew that when it came to Sansa, helping her always resulted in a high and personal cost for him.

"Are you still loyal to the North? To _our_ House?"

Instead of answering, he fell silent looking at the missive that was obviously for him. Jon took it without much resistance from her.

He broke the seal and read the letter. 

* * *

_Dear brother,_

_I write these words to you hoping that they will find you safe and sound wherever you are. I am at this moment in the mystical and legendary Yi Ti, because the west has taken me further east and here I am_. _The cities are like nothing you have seen before and the people are very different and interesting to discover. I wish I could describe all this in more detail but this is not the time. I don't think it ever be._

_During an incident, I ended up being treated in a wounded camp. Not here in Yi Ti but further east than you can imagine. I was in the middle of a war campaign. A company of mercenaries surrounding a city. When I woke up, my instinct told me to flee because you know that I have already survived a battle that I was not part of, I did not think that I would come out unscathed in a second. But then I noticed something familiar about one of the banners that hung high on a pole in the army camp. A black flag with a red dragon. I knew immediately_. _It was her. It was your Dragon Queen._

_You know I would have had no problem making sure I finished her to save us another massacre. It would not have been easy but you know that I could have carried out such a task. However, in the time when I was planning my next move, I also had time to see that the things that were happening there had little to do with what we witnessed at King's Landing. Here, she is not mad. Here she is almost a god_

_Eventually, our paths crossed and the confrontation was inevitable. She is aware of what I am capable of and vice versa. As much as my good sense told me that it was best to land a clean blow without hesitation, as with the Night King, with Daenerys Targaryen, for some reason, it does not seem so simple when there is no city set on fire to support that decision._

_So, I wondered if this is what our heroes really are. Ruthless killers. Conquerors. Defenders of the weak, mayhaps if there's a very good reason for it and maybe that reason never was in Westeros for her._

_I can't speak for you or her. I still fear that I made a mistake leaving her alive. I mean, I'm not sure, brother, what to do about it. These words may not even reach you. We may all be dead by then._

_The best we can do is move on, as I think she is doing. That is my advice to you. You did the right thing. You deserve to live and move on knowing that._

_Always yours,_

_Arya._

* * *

As she waited for Jon to finish reading his letter, Sansa couldn't stop thinking about the words that hers contained.

_I made a mistake in thinking that you had abandoned your bad intentions. It breaks my heart to know that when I finally thought you trusted me and Jon – in our family – you still believed that you should be the one to decide for everyone. I never knew back then that the Dragon Queen loved him. But you did and still, you used me, Sansa, assuring me that I should get to Cersei before her. I hope that the weight of the crown on your head is enough to compensate for the loneliness that you have brought to yourself_.

"How long?"

She snapped out of her ruminations. 

"What?"

"How long have you known this?"

Jon's calm posture was gone and replaced by sheer desperation, she noted. She felt angry at how this continued to affect him. _Why couldn't he just think with his head for once?_

"About the letters? They arrived a couple of moon turns ago but you know it's not easy–"

"And the rumors? And the stories?"

She had struggled to try to decide whether informing him of this was correct. In the few letters, she had exchanged with the south, at no point had they mentioned that Jon's punishment would be lifted. More than anything, Sansa believed that it was better to let him be free and happy here with his people. 

"It's not like we can reach you whenever we want. You're practically a deserter, Jon!" she excused. 

Jon turned and kicked a jar, the contents of it spilled and the sound disturbed her guards, who came but stopped when she signaled to them to do so.

"Jon," she called out to him in a small voice, "Jon, you haven't answered my question."

"What?" he asked, astonished.

An awkward silence reigned until he, his face contorted with dismay, said to her, "What does it matter who I'm loyal to? Do you think I'll do it again? Do you think I have a chance to do it again?"

She wasn't stupid and she knew that given the case it wouldn't even matter that he was willing to murder his mad aunt again.

"This goes beyond that," she admitted, walking towards him with an almost pleading expression. "Soon the whole Westeros is going to know that she is alive and the first thing they are going to assume is that...she was never dead, to begin with.

His gaze grew dark.

"That does not concern me."

"It should!" she protested. "It should because now the lords of the North harass me believing that we are all part of this. They think we are putting the North at risk!"

"How? How could they believe that when I killed her to save them all?"

"Because they don't think that happened in the first place."

Jon understood what she meant. He swallowed hard and shook his head.

"Well. In that case, it's my word against the fact she is alive."

"Your actions will speak louder than your words, Jon."

"What do you mean?"

"Come back home with me." 

Her insinuation made him take a few steps back, scared of her desperate eyes.

"I don't belong there," he replied. "I never did. I'm not a Stark."

His words made her freeze more than the intense weather on the wall did as soon as she arrived. It wasn't the first time he had excluded himself like that but this time it sounded different given what they both knew.

"That's not true. You are as much our father's son as I am, as Arya is and Bran is, and Robb and Rickon were." She paused not to let the growing fear reign her senses. 

"Come to Winterfell. Tyrion has a plan–"

"What? Tyrion? What are you talking about, Sansa? What does Tyrion have to do with all this?"

She looked defeated then.

"It didn't work, Jon. Not like we thought. Peace never came to any of the kingdoms."

"Peace has never reigned in Westeros."

"The North grows angry every day. People in the South are not happy with Bran, no matter how hard Tyrion tries to make him look like an improvement...it just hasn't worked."

"And is it my fault?"

"Of course not!"

"Then why should I keep fighting?"

She couldn't answer that. It was incredibly naive of her to believe that he would at least consider it.

Sansa resorted to one last stake.

"I am with child," she confessed. 

Jon frowned. His eyes were red as if he was resisting not to cry in front of her.

  
"My husband and I received the news recently."

He looked at her carefully trying to make sense of what she was saying.

"I'd feel safer knowing that you are home while I raise my child. If it's a boy I'd like to call him after father."

For a moment, she thought she saw a hint of happiness in Jon's eyes but as soon as it came it was gone too, perhaps remembering that her happiness had come at the cost of his own. But Sansa couldn't even understand that. 

"Congratulations, Your Grace," he said, turning to leave the room, not looking back.

* * *

He did not know how long he stared at the fire, waiting for it to finish burning, leaving the room dark and cold as he preferred it. That way, he could feel something. Even more intensely, he could even feel himself burning with the cold. Turning into ashes of ice.

It did not make sense. Nothing made sense.

After hearing that the Northern retinue withdrew from the castle, he locked himself in the Lord Commander's old tower willing to put his new dagger to his heart. But like so many other times, Jon couldn't force his hand to do it. The urge that had once dominated his senses was now weak and barely a whisper of the strength he had before when even to die, there was a good reason.

_You've taken everything of me with you_ , he thought, his eyes still fixed on the fire. _My desire to live. My desire to fight. My desire to die._ And instead, there is only a void left in him that he has tried to fill by living each day as if it were a punishment.

He hated her. He loved her. His heart was broken and nothing and no one could help her heal it. Every sensation and every touch felt like a mistake since her, as if a part of him had always known she was still alive.

He wondered if she was happy wherever she was. Enough time had passed for him to understand that she was not going to return. Return to him. And Jon didn't have the strength to go to her, not when everything he had given her was little and terrible compared to what she had given him.

He raised the dagger once more and brought it up to his heart. Anyway, it was a heart that no longer beat or felt. His pulse trembled and again the dagger fell to the side. Jon hugged himself and sobbed, for Dany, for the people of King's Landing, for the life that was not and could never be.


	3. Table Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks for your comments and kudos :)

**"Table Talk"**

**Braavos, Essos - 316 After Aegon's Conquest**.

"Thank you, Your Grace," Jon responded, looking around at the long looms that decorated the room. No banners of her – _their–_ house, but merely illustrations of events that he should take time to remember clearly. His eyes settled on her form again. "I'm just as happy to find you well," he said from the heart. 

She was terribly calm, with an impenetrable gaze and regular breathing. Daenerys realized that it was finally resignation that took control of her movements.

"Your Grace," he said, walking ahead until he heard the spears of her guards moving slightly. Ser Gerold, who commanded his king's guard, looked at him apprehensively, almost pleading the King to be careful with what he did. 

"King Jon," Daenerys cut in, might feeling the tension that was brewing in the room, "I was pleased to hear that the campaign for reunification in Westeros culminated in a victory for you."

From the distance, it was impossible to see if there was sincerity in her face. With the years and aging, also came certain disadvantages of the view.

The place was cold, probably because of the height of the ceiling, he thought. However, there was something else in the air that reminded Jon of home and it did not necessarily make him feel relieved.

Almost as if reading his mind, Dany came forward with something he didn't expect.

"We do what we can with what we have at hands which in both our cases it's not always too much. As I told your sister Arya here, I lamented what happened in the North years ago." 

She was talking about the war. The beginning of it. Of one of the many of them. 

"We didn't have the best of relationships with your sister Sansa," she kept saying, as his heart clenched with pain, "but I recognized the ruler in her when I first saw her. She cared for her people."

"And they betrayed her."

The comment escaped his mouth harshly and bitterly. He shouldn't have dared to speak so lightly about something that he himself was guilty of. Much less in front of her. As always, sometimes the urge was stronger than his good judgment.

"It happens frequently, I am aware," she simply agreed.

The environment became heavy with awkwardness and self-awareness. 

"On behalf of the Seven Kingdoms I come to personally thank you for the help–" he started to say but was interrupted midsentence.

"You're welcome. The Free Cities only looked after their interests," she said almost as if avoiding the matter, leaving him with the words hanging on the tip of his tongue and stealing from him the possibility to start a decent conversation. Her face turned to his Hand. "Ser Davos. How have you been?"

Jon looked over at him, and he returned the gesture. With a nod, he invited him to speak.

"I've seen better days, Your Grace."

"There are no better days than the days of peace."

Davos scoffed.

"Without a doubt." 

Silence. Jon didn't know how to pick up the conversation again after she'd dismissed him.

"You died," the old man said. Of course, he wasn't going to hold back from asking something out of place.

Daenerys only responded with a forced smile.

"Many years ago, I had the same question that you now have." Dany's eyes settled on him again when she confirmed, "I was," as if proving that Jon said the truth. They all knew it was a hard concept. 

"And you were brought back...brought back by the Red Priestess of the Red God."

A deafening silence reigned in the room. Jon could not read her from where he was. 

"It doesn't have to be an awkward affair. Too many years have passed and none of us is the person we were in those days. Right, Arya?" she asked his little sister, cocking her head toward her. Jon looked back to see at Arya returning a tight smile. "Would you rather have this conversation in private, King Jon?"

"Your grace–" one of her guards, a flamboyant man whose hair and beard were tinted in a bright purple, stood up to protest, immediately shutting up when Dany glared at him severely. 

Her eyes fell on him and Jon swallowed hard at the sudden rush of heat that washed over him. 

"Please," he answered. 

* * *

Two of his guards and two of hers were stationed on either side of a large table for a dozen people that separated them. Servants of the palace walked around delivering the different foods to be tasted although none of them felt an appetite of any kind. It was an unspoken knowledge for both of them that the feeling was a memory of the days of the past.

Still, Daenerys observed as he dared not to touch his food almost apprehensively. 

"The food is not poisoned," she said, calmly. "I am respectful of the guess right. And neither is poisoning my method."

In truth, he was just repeating words in his mind and had gotten lost in his thoughts. He was supposed to bring some kind of prepared speech. On the journey there, he had perfected it but in reality, it had been years of rambling.

"I thought you would offer me some bread and salt."

He couldn't believe that joke came out of his mouth. He didn't even know what he was saying.

Dany blinked, also caught off guard.

"I hadn't thought about it," she admitted, "Sometimes it happens to me that I forget things that once seemed so ordinary."

"The same thing happens to me. I think it's called getting old."

The realization that they were having such an ordinary conversation made her feel self-conscious. It was the feeling she had been avoiding. She was used to enduring tedious conversations in order to establish cordial relationships. The indifference of those encounters could not be compared to the poison that pricked her chest. 

He noticed this discomfort and decided to take the first step.

"I'm sorr–"

It was worse because she started shaking her head from side to side.

"No. Don't go there," Dany pleaded, sucking in a deep breath.

Her mind tried to go to a quiet place. Up a hill. The sea. The sunset. The wind hitting her face. A childish laugh. She swallowed hard and blinked back into the room, smiling kindly at him.

"Your niece is eager to see you," she changed the subject he attempted to touch. "I have to say that I was surprised will trust her with me. You know I do not have the best of stories with children." She nervously moved the food on her plate with the fork in her right hand, her gaze lowered. It was easier this way. "I don't think it would have been a decision that her mother would have approved."

The mention of Sansa never failed to sour the mood, though not that it was particularly high. He tried to see the good side of it, he would finally meet little Catrya. So, Jon smiled a little.

"If there's one thing I learned too late, it was to ignore Sansa's judgment," he said, biting his first piece of salted meat that tasted like nothing.

Dany felt compassion, looking at him carefully for a long time.

  
_"Burn it all, burn them all!"_ Arya's voice echoed in her memories.

"I mean it. Nobody deserves what happened to her."

"She came to me, you know? A few years earlier. She was afraid and asked me to stay with her. She also told me she was with child."

It sounded like he was confessing a sin to her. 

"Arya has the same regret. At the end of the day, you can never change what happened. You all were victims."

"It's not so like that, actually," he disagreed, surprisingly. "It may be, or it may not. The truth is that at one point I got tired of making sense of things. You would have been within your right to come back and retaliate."

She scoffed at the ridiculousness of it.

"Why?"

"I don't think it's necessary to answer that."

"Let's not fool ourselves. The real reason you feel bad is because it was impulsive."

So they reached there, inevitably, through bitter words.

He finished chewing and wiped himself with a napkin. How many times has he been here in the last couple of years? Diplomacy they called it. The worst of the tortures to which he's been subdued. Jon knew the words when it came to unfamiliar people. With her, who he probably didn't quite know either, the conversation was painful to the bone.

A bane even to his soul.

"You spoke of a new world. You made it look like something other than all of this you built here."

She wasn't expecting him to go straight to it. She sat upright, her hands clasped again in her lap. The queen persona.

"I'm going to be direct and honest with you Jon. What happened at King's Landing was a turning point. I wanted to show you what would happen if you left me with no choice. I thought there was nothing else I could lose, except there was something –my life– and I lost it too."

Her tired eyes fell on his. Both could see the traces of time in the other. Expression lines marked on her skin and the darkness under his eyes.

"After it, there was nothing to lose indeed, there was also nothing to make me come back. Even the most destructive of motivations have to be driven by something powerful and the truth is that I no longer had anything. I sat down to watch the sun rise, go down, then I watched to the moon do the same, every single day and every single night until I get tired and I decided to do something out of it." She took back the fork and knife to cut the meat. “Isn’t it funny that we fought to kill all those wights just to end in the same position? Fire wights, that’s what we are called."

"The irony does not escape me," he agreed, "And yet it's not about what happened at the end but about everything that came before that. It could have been avoided if we had more time."

  
"Make no mistake, Jon. We had time. We simply didn't know how to use it."

Everything was reduced to that? He asked himself. Perhaps that was why she appeared to be more out of it than he. Truth be told, Jon could tell that the matter still affected her as it did to him. Little things about her that only he knew how to notice.

"I wouldn't make the same decision today," he said. 

"Today you know that the other option was not better."

"It took me a couple of minutes to realize it wasn't the decision I should have made."

"What else you could have done? Forcing yourself to stay by my side even though I disgusted you?"

_Or you could have tried harder_ , she thought inevitable. But that was assuming something she was not sure of. 

"I do not–"

"Don't even dare to deny it," she chided him very slowly. "A woman may not have the strength of men for war but we have intuition and that kind of thing we never miss." She took a sip of her wine to wet her throat, dry from swallowing hard at the knots in it. "Beyond that, we were and perhaps still are very different people. Would you have survived a lifetime alongside a person whose pulse did not tremble to lay waste to a city full of innocents? Leaving a path of corpses behind her?"

She looked into his eyes but he didn't answer. He was suddenly numb.

"I thought so," she said. 

"But you weren't that person," he snapped out of it. "Maybe I don't have the intuition of you, Sansa, Arya, and all of them, but I saw a good person, and my mistake was not defending that when it was most needed."

And as he said, none of that mattered anymore.

"I can't argue with you on that. There was a time when I cared. I mean before King's Landing. Before all my sacrifices became futile."

"And now?"

"And now I rest," she sentenced. "I fought a lot, I won, I lost, I died, and where I always wanted to be is at this point. No duties or demands of any kind. I mean, Essos, unlike Westeros, does not need an authoritarian monarch constantly reminding them that they must sue for peace. I would not have chosen to take every free city had I had the certainty that Slaver's Bay would be safe but the thing is: you can't leave any loose ends. Bad decisions always come to bite your arse."

"I know better than anyone now," he said, slowly drifting into his deepest thoughts again. "We can only wait for our good intentions to be sufficient."

Dany dared to let out a burst of soft laughter. 

  
"Is not always that way. Don't be naive."

He enjoyed hearing her laugh even if it was at his expense. 

  
"I want to believe that there is something good still going."

"Rest assure, Jon Snow. If there is one thing I never had doubts about, it is that you will be a good king."

Involuntarily his heart skipped a beat and he thought he saw a glimpse of the woman who once loved him unconditionally and the faith she held in him. Things he was sure he would never have again. 

"I'll try."

For a moment they looked at each other for a long time in silence, without needing to convey in words what their looks said. But she, perhaps involuntarily, brought her left hand to her side, in that place where he knew was the eternal memory of his betrayal. Only there could he see the ink marks on the back of her hand.

"Very well. If that is all. Your rooms will be prepared–"

  
"It is not all."

"Uh."

His eyes fell on those marks. He had seen them in some people over the years, especially the Ironborn, but he never imagined that Daenerys would have one of them. In his mind, Jon kept remembering her as the young woman with flawless skin. Skin that he had covered with his eyes, with his touch, and with his mouth.

In this room, so far from her and so uncomfortable with the presence of all this newness around them, he found himself pigeonholed into memories.

"There are little opportunities that appear and one has to be smart enough to take them and hold on to them," he said almost to himself. "When my sister was killed, all I thought was that I wanted to destroy those who did it but over time I also realized that I wanted more than that. I wanted...I wanted to take what was in front of me. For the first time, I wanted something to be mine. I came to think that something was the power to hurt those who had hurt me, but at the end of the day I always ended up looking toward another goal...across the Narrow Sea."

Dany felt her expression soften in dismay at his words.

"What are you talking about?"

He gulped. Not because he was undecided about what he wanted to do and say but because of what he knew she would immediately think. He could put into words the whole truth of his feelings but it would still be little, he believed. And more than anything, Jon couldn't see himself as someone worthy. Even after all this time.

"Many years ago, I was just an idealistic boy who insisted on convincing you to give me everything you had for a war of which you knew nothing. And even though it was hard to make you believe in me, you did. And once you did, you trusted me far more than anyone had ever had faith in me before."

"That's not true," she snapped, "A lot of people had faith in you. It was one of the reasons I envied you. I never had that in Westeros."

The message she was giving did not go unnoticed by him. _Not even you trusted in me._

"I made the mistake by letting them think that you were doing it for purely selfish reasons," he kept speaking despite her interruption, "It took me a couple of mishaps and years but here I am, undeserving as always but trying to do the right thing." 

_The right thing?_ She wondered as she began to breathe fast with the worst of assumptions looming in her mind.

"I want to give you the Seven Kingdoms," he finally said. 


	4. Cold Winds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know some of you are going to get a little bit mad at Arya in this chapter but I think it's necessary for her to ask all those questions to eventually get her to where I want her to go. 
> 
> Thanks as always for your comments and kudos.

**"Cold Winds"**

**New Ibbish - 308 After Aegon's Conquest**.

Of all the possible ways Arya imagined herself dying, from hypothermia was one of the most unlikely. And yet there she was, at the foot of a temple, freezing. A she-wolf of Winterfell about to be consumed by the same cold that had raised and nurtured her. Well, not the same certainly because something in this part of the world was not right for the North to be warm in comparison.

Or maybe it was the fact that she was fucking uncovered and unprepared for this weather.

What had she thought by following Daenerys' armies here? Oh yeah, she remembered. That she was now in charge of making sure none of these cities ended up as King's Landing. It was a very stupid idea. The worst thing was that the more she went on, the less reason to be there Arya had. Daenerys seemed to have no intention of being the mad queen on this side of the world. 

_What a fool has she been in Westeros_ , she began to grumble to herself as she gazed at the town that the Dragon Queen and her armies had taken over some days ago. _Risking her entire legacy like that? Why?_

Arya recalled the words of Tywin Lannister.

_Do you know what legacy means? It's what you pass down to your children and your children's children. It's what remains of you when you are gone_.

Barely opening her eyes, with heavy lashes covered in frost, she gazed up at the high walls atop the ice arch where now hang several banners of House Targaryen. The new one. And for a moment, she recalled King's Landing, the view not much different from that day except that these place had not been reduced to ashes.

She slowly drifted off to sleep.

The next time she awoke, the softness of a bed and heavy furs enveloped her, bringing the warmth back to her body. She heard voices coming and going and one of them, was particularly well-known to her.

_Daenerys_. 

* * *

Almost a moon turn later, when she had already decided to take a different course and abandon this endeavor, a soldier of hers stopped her. 

"Excuse me, my lady, the Queen wonders if you care to join her for a meal," he simply said.

Arya hesitated; her nature was to distrust so many gratuitous kindnesses. However, it had reached a point where not understanding the motivations of this person began to become a sort of annoying obsession for her.

"Of course," she responded, following him when he offered her the bridle of a mount for herself.

* * *

Daenerys carefully watched as Arya Stark walked into the hall and sat at the opposite end of the table. On her lap rested letters from her various informants across the continent, a task that she had relegated to the background when she learned that the young woman had accepted her offer. With the Starks, she’d never really knew what to expect, so on the one hand she didn't rule out the possibility that the quiet evening could turn into something more chaotic.

"Please, feel free to eat. Poison is not my method, as you know," she insisted on not hearing the sound of the cutlery moving, without looking up from her papers. Her concentration was no longer there but she pretended it was.

Arya's mouth watered when she saw the feast in front of her but she preferred to act calm and wait to see that the queen herself began to taste her own food. Daenerys noticed this and brought a piece of food to her mouth.

She hadn't had a decent meal in what she felt has been years. Not that she was used to it.

"I've sent letters to Westeros warning my family about you," Arya let her know.

"Of that, I am sure," Dany replied calmly. 

"Aren't you mad?"

"I am mad. Not in the way you think though. Look at me, sharing my supper with the sister of the man that killed me."

Arya scoffed.

"And my other brother now sits on your throne. That should be filling you with rage, doesn't it?"

_Intelligent girl, trying to elicit a response from my part_ , Dany realized. Not that the Arya had any reason to believe Dany other than the tyrannical ruler she proved to be in Westeros. An image that no liberation campaign seemed to be able to erase.

"I understand the Iron Throne is no more. Drogon burned it."

"You know what I mean."

"You are here keeping an eye on me. I take it?" Dany finally faced the fact. She put her papers aside. "I'll tell you something about my past, Arya. You are not the first one to try such thing. When I was a child, me and my brother, we would be always running away from assassins. Sent by the Usurper, of course. How much evil can one person have to torture two children without family or resources in that way?”

Arya was silent, chewing her supper although it suddenly stopped having taste in her mouth. She thought of Bran, Rickon, and herself as children.

"I can understand it perfectly. The Lannisters did the same to us," she said.

"Of course, they did," Daenerys acknowledged, "It is a common practice to eliminate the competition. And while I don't think you would have posed such a threat to Cersei; your family did by rebelling against the Crown."

Then, Arya stopped following her point.

"Are you justifying her?" she asked her, outraged. 

"Tell me. Did I ever do the same?"

"No. You did worse. You attacked innocents. You were not different from Cersei." _You were worse than Cersei_ , she almost said but that was something Arya couldn't do. Cersei just didn't have the means.

"Would you have preferred me to go after your siblings and you directly?"

"It would have been more understandable and I would have killed you before Jon could even notice."

When she said those words, suddenly a fleeting thought crossed Arya's mind. In all of these suppositions, Jon always got hurt. But it wasn't their fault, was it?

"But I didn't, I don't, and I'm not going to do it in the future," Daenerys responded.

"Do you think that makes you better in some way? I can't allow your madness to lead you to commit such an act again! That's why Jon had to stop you. This goes beyond love. No person with honor would have let you continue."

Daenerys smirked as she realized that she was now touching a sensitive nerve in the girl.

"Was the Honorable Ned Stark concerned about what happened to us? My brother Viserys, a boy, and I, a newborn? No, he didn't care!" she snapped, and Arya’s hand closed tightly on the end of her knife. Tears filled her eyes and she fought the urge to let them drop. "He knew what Robert was capable of, so he hid his nephew and is why he sent Jon away to the Wall." Arya's chest rose and fell and Dany felt that same adrenaline rush that she felt every time she was on the battlefield. The knowledge that there was a certain danger in front of her. "That's what you Starks are. Honor and duty only to yourselves and the North. What cause did you serve other than those who served your own behalf?"

"The dead–" Arya started saying but was interrupted. 

"Like someone we both know used to tirelessly repeat, that war belonged to everyone. Yet, _I did care_ about protecting your home." 

_Because he made me worry about it_ , Dany would have added had it not been for how painful that realization still felt.

Daenerys sipped from her goblet to try to calm herself. Arya kept staring at her with her brows furrowed.

Finally, more relaxed, Dany sighed and said,

"Make no mistake, Arya. I can recognize the good traits of a person. Your father protected Jon by sacrificing his honor. Jon protected the world by sacrificing his. Those kinds of things are hard to deny and hard to complain." Dany stood up, her guards in position to follow her. "I know you also want to do the right thing by making sure there's no other King's Landing and I know my word will not reassure you. And I can't let you die under my watch, I already told you why. The only thing I can do in the face of this impossible scenario you force me in is to is make you swear that you are not going to try anything foolish that _forces me_ to hurt you. Find a place among my men and stay there to keep a close watch of my madness. You will not be the first or the last to carry out such a task."

Saying so, the Queen retired. 

* * *

It took Arya several days to finally make up her mind. Meanwhile, she wandered here and there trying to make sense of something that would never make sense to her. And if that was the case for her, she couldn't imagine what Jon might be feeling, wherever he was.

She found the Dragon Queen at an inn near the harbor, where they herded reindeer. She was brushing the back of one of them when Arya approached, closely watched by her people.

She looked smaller without her long, intrinsic braids.

"Where are you going now?" Arya asked her. 

Daenerys turned to see her without giving much thought to her presence.

"Are you following me?" Dany replied, expecting a negative response. Instead, Arya shrugged.

"If it's an interesting place," she said.

Dany squinted at her. She let out a sigh at the absurd idea looming in her mind.

"I'm still at war."

"Why?” Arya wanted to know, “Why this obsession to collect cities wherever you go? Don’t you have enough? This is going beyond slavery."

Daenerys snorted and hot mist came out of her nostrils. She said goodbye to her friend in front of her and handed the brush to one of the inn workers. She had come there almost daily to escape the thoughts Arya Stark had brought with her now.

Daenerys gestured for them to walk together toward the pier, which was more of a narrow path of wet and slippery wood. In front of them were a great rock and ice formation that supported the town and its fortress.

"My Hand–" Dany started saying but cut herself off at the lapse, “Excuse me, I mean, my former Hand, Tyrion. He used to warn me that some good intentions tend to become obsessions and that can easily turn into madness.” She turned to see Arya, who was listening with her eyes lost in the sea. “He believed himself to be the one who had to control my impulses, and I let him believe so because I let myself believe that such a thing was a problem." She twitched her lips. "I am just making sure at least this one thing, I do well."

"You should never have trusted a Lannister. They are all treacherous." Arya blurted out.

"Well, in my defense, they all seemed to trust one. Your brother to begin with. Your sister too. She trusted Ser Jaime Lannister more than she ever trusted me, that I went to save her home."

Arya didn’t want to think about that anymore. She had many things stuck in her chest regarding Sansa's actions. In the middle of a war against the dead, she had believed that she had to keep her family together as her father would have wanted. But after that, she just remembered wanting to leave. _Had I been more careful, perhaps_. No, she refused to question herself again. There were things that simply out of her control.

"Both Jon and Sansa trusted the wrong people," she asserted, looking over at the Dragon Queen, whose brow furrowed. "I'm not talking about you though. Not if this is all that Jon saw first. I can understand that he fell in love with you because of more than your looks. Or am I wrong?"

She tried to sound light because it was something very clear for Arya. Something that she had not questioned so far. Jon had loved this woman. However, the queen's countenance turned serious. As someone who disagrees.

"Jon is a man of compassionate nature, a trait he probably inherited from your father if the recounting of his person is true. Although I don't think I am the right person to bear witness to it. In neither case.”

Arya couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“He bent the knee to you,” she emphasized as if it were evidence of something extremely important.

“Aye. He believed my good intentions deserved to be acknowledged." Dany suddenly felt the need to smile to take the weight off the matter, otherwise, she would've cried. But she was never going to allow herself to do that in front of Arya Stark. "What I'm trying to say, Arya, is that I don't believe for a second that your brother was blinded when he trusted me. _He had reasons to do so_. The one who decided to betray everything was me. Regardless of the others and everything that happened in that final stretch...the one who was up there, with the decision in her hands, was me and only me."

"But killing you destroyed him!”

Arya still couldn't understand, and she wouldn't do it without knowing the particulars of their intimacy and that was something Dany couldn't give her or anyone.

“Jon is too good to be able to live with a clear conscience, I take it.”

Arya stopped walking and faced her.

“Then go there where he is and tell him you were wrong and he was right in doing what he did.”

"No,” Dany stated.

"Why not?"

"Because I hate him!” she finally told her, barely in a whisper. Noticing herself in the edge, she reached up to comb her hair back. “When you hate somebody you used to love then all that it is in between is pain and believe me, Arya, you don’t want me near him this way.”

Arya's cold eyes softened and Daenerys had to avert her because if she stared long enough, she could remember Jon's eyes looking at her with the same helplessness.

“So you don’t believe he ever loved you?” she asked with a cautious tone.

_I don't know_ , Daenerys would have wanted to answer. _Maybe the way I love is not the right way to love_.

"I just think that it takes more than a few words and few good deeds to achieve that. I am certain that I fell from a great height for him.” Dany turned around and looked at her. “I don't think he even took a step forward.” Making that clear, and not wanting to delve deeper into that matter, Daenerys invited Arya to see where her fleet was. There was a large ship that stood out from the rest and a smaller one with a white sail. “You know what my vessel is. The one a little further, with a white sail, goes towards the western ports, Morosh, Lorath, and eventually Braavos. That is not my destination at the moment. I’m going East.”

Dany started walking away. Arya stopped her with a last question.

"If you hadn't done it...If you hadn't burned the city that day. What would've happened then?"

Daenerys scoffed, having asked herself the same thing a long time ago.

"The funny thing is,” she said with a sad smile on her face, “I don't think it would have changed anything in the end."

* * *

"Could you please making it shorter?" Daenerys asked Nary, her handmaid when she looked at herself in the mirror and decided she didn't like her hair past her shoulders.

"But Mhysa–" Nary protested.

"I won't change my mind," Daenerys stated to save the conversation. Nary was a girl of just four and ten when they met and she still proudly wore her victorious braids, back in Meereen. 

The young woman shook her head side to side.

After finishing dealing with the council that ruled the city, Daenerys decided that it was time to leave. Ibben was just a break from the war, after so many battles. Neither she wanted to harass them nor did they cause trouble. In fact, they had been quite comfortable with the treat reached. After all, Daenerys commanded the Dothraki and they were the main enemies of its people. It was rather an easy affair. 

Now she was back at sea.

Nary brushed the hairs that fell on the fur of her coat. On the wooden floor, there were more than Dany looked glowing as if mocking at her.

Nary left after cleaning everything up and she was alone with her thoughts again.

  
A cracking sound startled her. She turned around immediately with a cry stuck in her throat.

Arya was standing in front of her desk, holding the dagger that went through her heart and beholding it.

"This is Jon's," she said.

Daenerys looked around. 

"It is mine now," she responded. 

Arya did not say another thing and just nodded. 

* * *

**Ruddy Hall - 309 After Aegon’s Conquest**.

With his gnarled hands, Jon continued working on the wattling of the walls he was helping to build for the new homes to be located northwest of Ruddy Hall. With this, he felt that he was paying for his stay with the Free Folk, not that they had ever complained. In those days, he only looked to have his mind and hands filled with work. He wanted to be occupied with something so as not to let himself drown in the same bleak thoughts that always came back to haunt him.

Although, he was not certain about lots of things what was clear to him is that he would not return home or to war.

Sometimes he even mediated in some conflicts between the tribes, but he knew well that it was not his place, and that if he get too close, he would end up again involved where he did not want to be. Things weren't exactly peaceful among Free Folk, and once spring set in, new forms of disagreement began to emerge among their people. Luckily, in Tormund's village things used to be relatively calm. The problem with this was preventing outsiders from wanting to come and disturb that peace.

"Jon!" Tormund called after him, trotting up to him. "We have a problem and we need you."

So it began. And Jon only intervened because he knew what could happen if he let an argument grow into something bigger.

In some cases, they were simple matters, neighbors who did not agree on where their respective lands began and ended or the disagreement about the belonging of some animal. Other times, someone would steal the daughter of someone else, who was an enemy of that someone, and things escalated. Even if Jon would try to establish some form of order, he could not go against thousands of years of habit.

"I don't want to take part in it," he apologized, as he would do at first most of the time. But he had to take part. He always did inevitably. He couldn't go against it because it was something almost rooted within him.

"It will only be a moment," Tormund explained this time. Then Jon heard what he had to say.

The last time Mance Rayder had united the Free Folk, he had done so on the way to saving the most lives. Now that there was no threat that waylaid everyone regardless of which clan they belonged to, those things mattered again, in the sense that they were willing to revert to their old looting and warring habits.

“So this Styr wants to take over Hardhome? It makes sense,” he commented when Tormund finished telling him what the latest conflict was. “More than ever, I don't want to take part in it. Let the strongest win. Anyway, it's a ghost town."

Tormund let out a thunderous laugh.

“We don't want to avoid them, little crow. We want to join them. Our menfolk are thirsty for some action. "

Jon also let out a slightly less animated laugh. He could understand it, but he wasn't ready for it.

"We do not ask you to take part, but tell us what or not to do."

"That sounds like taking part."

"Well," said Tormund, "You are part of us, aren't you?"

Jon swallowed hard. Ever since he had decided to desert and move here with the wildlings, the question had arisen as to whether he was now one of them. He had believed so at first. It was easy to be there, that was the truth. He was just Jon with them, or "the Crow", and as such, he had no more duties to attend to. Yet he always found himself feeling like an outsider. He could steal a woman and that would do for them. It would make him part of their people, definitely. Or he could join the looting parties. But he didn't do any of these things and rather, kept on being on that blurred line between a deserter and an outsider.

"All I ask is that innocents not be harmed," he said, after thinking about it.

Tormund celebrated with a yell and patted his back.

"By the way," he said as he got up and removed something from the pocket of the heavy fur coat. It was a piece of paper. "They brought this from Castle Black for you."

Jon caught a glimpse of the Direwolf's seal on it.

"You know what to do with it," he instructed his friend.

Tormund left and he returned to his activity. After a while, Ghost came back with a game between his tusks, announcing the time for supper. 

_It's simpler that way_ , he repeated to himself, sitting on a fallen log in front of an early fire, still looking at his empty hands. So why couldn't he feel any better?


	5. Extinguish the Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for the comments and kudos❤

**"Extinguish the Fire"**

**Braavos - 316 After Aegon's Conquest**. 

At first, she is left speechless. It took a moment to finally make sense of his words, and Daenerys even thought he would back down and say he was playing a joke on her. But he has never made jokes. Not with her. He'd been extremely serious and spoke only the truth of his mind. Or he has remained silent and said nothing.

_You are my queen, now and always_.

Was he trying to amend this last vow? The thought made her sick but it also made her see how much she still knew him.

"I've never thought you a royal jester," she said, barely letting out a huff, "Isn't Davos supposed to dissuade you from this sort of folly?" The nerves in her neck and head throbbed. "Tell me no. Tell me you're not saying this in a serious note."

He'd tried to hold her gaze but ultimately, he couldn't. Not because he wasn't willing to stand by his words but because of the hypocrisy in which he was falling into. He'd rushed the words on an impulse, as he has made before even on the battlefield. Because he has been eager to just deal with it and lay the truth of his intentions, Jon had forgotten his caution. Now she was regarding him as though he had the plague, and perhaps it was like that for he has only wrought ruin upon her.

"You cannot be seriously speaking about this. Anything but this!" she shouted, making the guards stir. "You are the same fool man, Jon Snow."

Daenerys got up, throwing her napkin on the table and Jon followed suit.

"Daenerys," he said, "It is not–" he trailed off a bit, "This is how it should be."

"What do you know about what it should be or should not be?" she said, heartbeats pounding her ears "You, yourself sentenced me to die! You deceived me and killed me. And it was because you concluded I was not good. You now come all this way to give me the exact same thing you stole from me first?"

"I did not mean to steal anything from you. You killed all those people and were ablaze for more!”

"All the more reason, what in Seven Hells are you saying?"

He felt terribly exposed. Not that his guards could do or say anything to make him feel that way, but the confrontation exposed years of exhaustion and frustration, and from the way she addressed him with so much pent-up resentment, he supposed both parties were beginning to let the worst of them take back the best.

"You said we could have this conversation in private," he dared to say.

She moved her lips to answer but couldn't blurt out whatever she was going to say. Instead, her angry eyes stayed on him as she ordered everyone but him to leave the room. Jon gave a nod to his guards to comply.

He was the first to take his seat again, as she finally saw him relax. This made Daenerys become even more defensive, seeing how he could have that assurance from her part, contrary to her. The last time they were alone like this, it ended with her death.

“I am not asking you only to have me. Seven hells! I am not that unhinged,” he added up urgently, believing that the idea would be almost even grotesque for her. “ _I want to give you back your home_.”

These words made her falter for a moment and for that, Daenerys felt the need to straighten up, as her patience ran out.

“You are good, Dany,” he said and she felt his tense shoulders drop. She rejected the way he called her but she didn’t want to let him know it affected her. "And I don't need going through the cities and kingdoms you save to know that. I know firsthand.” He looked at her with a face full of regret. Defeated, almost. “We all played a part in your demise. We made you wrong.”

“I–”

“Let me finish. Please," he begged her. 

She closed her hands into fits but allowed him.

“I was young and I was naïve. I couldn't think beyond what was right. Not only at the end, as I was saying, but also before when I thought that we all together, we were fighting on the same side.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. The fact she remained standing and refused to sit set him off a bit. “I couldn't see through my sister Sansa's intentions. She antagonized me for the power of the North and I assumed she would always do so because she cared for them as I used to.”

She didn’t miss how he talked in past tense.

“Nor did I dare to question her because I felt I owed her and that the rest of the North would always see it that way. I never saw me being their king as anything more than a means to an end.”

_I never saw myself as Stark_ , he was saying in other words but didn't dare tell her directly. 

“As your duty,” she said quietly. “You always saw what was bestowed upon you as an honor and therefore, your duty.”

“Aye,” _but not all of it_ he almost said. _Not when you gave yourself to me_. He couldn’t bring himself to say –to admit– he loved her in true and let her know what she believed was false due to the lack of facts that could support that statement. "It's not enough," he said aloud what he was thinking, "to justify the damage my actions caused you," he added.

She wouldn't have expected him to say it but it didn't surprise her either. Until now, his presence was still tedious for her and she only wanted to clear up this matter so she could send him away. All of them.

So why was her entire body still stiff?

"And Lord Varys. And Tyrion," he lowered his eyes as if he couldn't bear to face her right then, "I can excuse myself for trusting Sansa but not for trusting them. Never for them."

It surprised her how unprepared the mention of her former Hand had taken her. What happened to him? She doesn't know. The last time they met, he was facing certain death for treason.

"None of that matters now," he said with a blank stare before setting eyes back on her. “They are all dead.”

_So Tyrion is dead_ , she thought. She felt ambivalent about it.

“Betrayed and through me.”

“What are you trying to say?”

His face contorted as if remembering something painful.

“I told Sansa. Sansa told Tyrion. Tyrion told Varys. Because of me, you killed him–”

“No,” she interrupted him, “I killed him because he was a traitor and that’s the punishment for treason.”

She stood by her decision. And just thinking that Jon was still holding her accountable for a crime for it filled her with rage again.

“It's not what I thought back then,” he lamented, “I thought him a victim of my naivety. But he was nowhere near it. And he deserved what he got.”

She scoffed. _For what’s good to me that now_.

“I understand there is no use letting you know now, but Lord Varys was poisoning you,” he revealed.

Dany's face paled. While it shouldn't come as a surprise, it wouldn't have been Varys’ first attempt in getting her killed after all, it served to remind her again of how full of enemies she was and how right she was to feel alone and abandoned the way she did. _Weak_ , a voice reminded her. _Alone and weak_.

“Don’t’ you–” she gulped nervously, “Don’t you know what kind of poison was?”

He had asked himself the same question then. He shook his head from side to side in denial, making her wince.

“Well, whatever it was, I don’t think it could have done anything,” she said stoically.

“You don’t know.”

“I know.”

They remained in silence until he continued with his point.

“Sansa…you know what happened to her. I told you she went to ask for help, she wanted me by her side because she knew what havoc was brewing between the people of the North but I refused to abide by her plea because I hated her.”

Dany jolted a little.

“You hated her?”

“Of course, I–” Jon stopped at seeing her unsettled. Glimpses of her disbelief at him appeared from time to time causing him to withdraw into himself. “If I had done things differently–”

“You would’ve ended up killed with her.”

“Or might my niece would have her home and her parents.”

Her expression softened and he could feel that it was because of the subject of their current conversation. _Catrya_.

“She is a good child,” she said almost thoughtfully.

He would have smiled if it weren't inappropriate. It did to his heart indescribable things knowing she cared for his niece and Sansa’s daughter. She could have been spiteful or even indifferent, but she cared, and that to him gave away Dany still was a caring person, in spite of what came about in between.

She cleared her throat when the silence became unbearable.

“You mentioned Tyrion.”

He grimaced.

“He died, I take,” she guessed correctly.

He owed this truth to her, as much as it would only make her hate him more.

“He died,” he affirmed, “I killed him.”

Dany frowned but understood it had sense. Although she avoided meddling too much, Arya would drop out unrequired information every so often. Tyrion’s ultimate fate never reached her but he served the king Jon finally deposed, so it was only a sensible outcome.

“I know what you're trying to do, and I don't like it at all.”

Dany calmly sat down; hands folded protectively over her belly.

“You try to make me see how all those people ended up the same as me. As with your proposal, you intend to make everything work the way it should have been. _The way you think it should have been_.” She smirked. “Like when you thought that telling Sansa your secret wouldn't affect us. Like when you thought it was honorable to serve me without a question. Like when you killed me because you thought it was necessary. It seems that it all comes down to what good Jon Snow deems right.”

He didn't blame her for coming to that conclusion.

“I only can answer for myself, Daenerys,” he said quietly with a sad smile.

She turned serious again.

“Then what is this about? You know we cannot be anymore. I am a madwoman and you, a kinslayer. Neither of us has anything to gain from this.”

"But it's never that simple, is it?" he says, suppressing the urge to tell her that it was not like that. She was not mad. Through Arya's letters, he knew that it was something she had carried since then and seemed not to want to let go. "I was in Highgarden," he started to say and watched her stir in place. He hoped he was seeing well. "When Davos spoke to me at length about what awaited us in Dorne."

“Which makes this nonsense even more absurd,” she said calmly, looking down at her hands before lifting up her stare again, “Part of your duty as king is to seek peace through alliances. _Marriage alliance_. And what better than the princess of Dorne to finish unifying the Seven Kingdoms?”

“Because it is not right.”

“And for what bloody reason it wouldn’t be right, Jon?” she asked him feeling exasperated and brought to the edge of her forbearance. 

Instead of understanding this and being short and go forthright to his explanation, Jon get lost in thought again, until he finally admitted,

“Because when it all came down to it, I asked myself this question, do I want to move on without at least trying to do what I want to do truly?” He looked up to her intently. “I know the answer to that; hence here I am. It is not a decision based on what is good for the Seven Kingdoms, though I have no doubt that it is, nor on what honor demands of me, but on what I want. And even knowing that there are things in between that are beyond repair, _I am here_. Because is where I want to be.” He almost told her that he hoped she could eventually see through it, his true feelings, but he was too skeptical to expect such a thing. “I don’t want to call another one my queen. Not unless is the last choice I have to make. Not if it’s up to me to decide.” He sighed. “Haven’t you asked yourself the same?”

Daenerys did see the sincerity of his words but as in the past, he wasn’t being genuine. And she thanked the gods he hadn’t used stronger words. It almost made her sympathize with him, having to carry the weight of something he wished he hadn’t done.

But it was not enough. They didn’t even know the other for who they were anymore.

"The right thing as you called it, has never been enough for me. It will never be. And I feel insulted once again, that you would believe I'm even interested in old broken dreams and a false love from the past."

He knew and accepted this was only fair.

"But I did ask myself that question long ago and I answered it too,” she said quietly while holding his gaze and standing up slowly. "I am Dany no more. I know no home and _I need no one_.”


	6. Riverside

** "Riverside" **

** Northeast of Essos – 309 After Aegon's Conquest. **

Arya decided that she was going to kill Daenerys. Not because she posed a threat to others –she was still significantly harmful– but because she had come to understand in the last couple of moonturns that the greatest menace she represented to was to herself. And Arya was fed up with watching her dance with death so nonchalantly.

There was no doubt that despite all her flaws and pressing setbacks, Daenerys still maintained a suit of loyal followers. Although her army now consisted mainly of unnamed soldiers seeking only their next guerdon, there was a favored group that truly believed in her and revered her person. It was in this latter place that Arya found herself inhabiting, not for the aforementioned reasons, as she still held her suspicions regarding the Dragon Queen but because it was through them that Arya could closely watch over the madness that controlled the reins of her sanity.

She struck up a certain kind of friendship based on exchanging stories around the fire with both devoted believers of her, Zelan and Hamerubi. 

_Daenerys had been sent by the gods to eradicate from the earth the very slavery that the Valyrians had imposed_ , they said. _The gods extinguished her entire kin but left her behind so she could right their wrongs._

“I heard that she’s not very dear on the other side of the Narrow Sea,” Arya prompted one night, after hearing the young men’s praises. “That she burned an entire city with innocents.”

“Cock-and-bull story,” Zelan blurted out, in his thick Essossi accent. He came from the lands of Lhazzar, that’s the little she knew about him.

“ _Westerosi liars and fiends_ ,” Hamerubi, from wildish lands of Yi Ti, also uphold.

She just ducked her head and refrain from insisting.

She was getting better and better at grasping the different languages and dialects because of them, and through their talks was that she learned how isolated the Dragon Queen was all the time. Arya remembered very little of anything that happened in Winterfell, but she was told of a Khaleesi that used to spend time among her people. This Daenerys hardly show herself to her people.

“So, where she goes?” Arya inquired when Zelan, who had a better understanding of the common tongue explained Daenerys wasn’t with them and would not be ever.

“To her lair,” he answered her.

It took her a while to comprehend what this meant.

* * *

After a particularly important battle where her army had been defeated with significant losses, Arya had believed that Daenerys would resort to her greatest weapon. However, the black dragon broke through the besieged city and flew away. 

She found her hours later when there was almost no daylight, near the riverside, the dragon lying by her side guarding her zealously. He growled in her direction when he saw Arya appearing behind the thick bushes that lined the zone and for a moment Arya believed that this was where her passage through this world would end. 

The small shape of her body was spread out on the ground, shuddering with light tremors. She thought for a moment that she was crying until her voice came out unwavering to order her dragon to drop the guard.

Arya flitted her eyes upward. The beast continued to watch her with caution and warning. He was so immense that, seeing herself underneath him, she remembered once again that fateful day at King's Landing, when all life was engulfed by his flames. Arya also recalled herself as a little girl in Winterfell's crypts, playing with her siblings pretending to be Queen Visenya Targaryen on the back of her dragon Vaghar. 

She turned to see her then, her offspring on the ground.

Daenerys was in a state of utter vulnerability and exposure. She was not clad in regal garments as Arya has seen her before but in common breeches and rudimentary clothes. Something similar to what the women who tended the camp wore – she knew they were kin of the Dothraki. 

"Daenerys," Arya dared to shake her a bit even as the dragon dangerously hovered. 

The Dragon Queen said something in a whisper. 

"What?" Arya asked her but thought Daenerys talked again she couldn't understand the words. It was then that she saw it again: that knife. She clutched to it as if letting it go wasn't an option. It was an obsession of hers, she knew, though Arya couldn't know if it was about the person whom this dagger belonged to or to the act he committed against her person. If she could only guess, it was a bit of both. 

Daenerys was so exposed that with one quick, silent movement, Arya could finish her off. She could even imagine it in her mind. However, something was stopping her. Arya had never murdered in this way –to someone who offered no opposition, at all. It was as if the knowledge hit her abruptly. _Jon did so_ , she thought, killing her when she was defenseless. A sudden discomfort surged through her in the form of sympathy for the Dragon Queen, which she quickly tried to shake off. This evil person killed thousands, children among them, she remembered herself. And her brother did the right thing. Jon has never done otherwise but what was best for everyone. 

The tremors of her body became frantic, causing her to step aside so as not to be hit by them. It was like she was having a nightmare, but Arya knew she was awake and aware. 

It was like if Daenerys simply didn't care anymore. 

* * *

Daenerys was looking at the stars imagining that they were moving from one side to the other. _Or perhaps it is the sky that moved them_. Essos had the most beautiful sky she'd ever seen. In Westeros, they weren't this beautiful, and for that at least she was grateful because it reminded her nothing there was good-natured. 

She felt a presence approaching through her bond with Drogon, and also through him, she could know that it was her unabating tormentor, the Stark girl, the monster-slayer.

_What a fitting company_ , Daenerys thought.

_“Drogon, be good_ ,” she indicated to him. Not that she could do much if he instinctively decided to attack. But he didn't, because he understood that she didn't want it that way, even if it meant lethal harm to her.

“Daenerys,” Arya called out.

“ _Do what you’ve come to do_ ,” she attempted to tell but the words came out too slowly to be heard and in her mother tongue, which she was sure Arya didn't get quite well yet. The next day, she planned to attack the city. Burn their walls and destroy her enemies within their _stone houses_. Tomorrow would be too late to stop her madness.

_You should’ve done it that way_ , she told her shadow, that one that always stood in front of her. The shadow she didn’t want to see in true light anymore. _You should have killed me in my dreams, while we were still at Dragonstone, in the warmth of my bed. You should have burned my body and saved me from this wicked game of life and death_. Daenerys chided the shadow as if she had a real conversation, even though she knew it was just her madness lurking in her senses. _May Arya will do it better_.

She would die looking at the stars, she liked that. But Arya never did it and she felt enraged because no one would give her what she wanted. Not even herself. The knife in her fierce grip felt enormous and sharp as if it was the object embracing her and not her to it. It was overwhelming and racking. 

_You should have killed me better_ , she told the shadow. _You should have loved me better_. 

* * *

**Hardhome – 309 After Aegon's Conquest**.

A small smile formed on his mouth but he never felt it go any further than that. There, standing where the all-powerful Night King once did, far from feeling the same way, Jon watched as that which he sought to destroy resurfaced with a spirit of celebration. Tormund and his people had taken back what was left of Hardhome and after the warring, it came the celebration. The expression on Jon's face surely did not reflect the joy he was witnessing. All that exhilaration felt far away to him as if he was watching a boat drift off shore. 

_You shouldn't be here_ , a voice whispered in his ear. Clear and diffuse at the same time. _Where else then?_ He would ask in return.

He adjusted the bridle of his horse to signal him to turn and hide again in the darkness of the forest, where he felt he belonged. Ghost trotted beside him not far away. His eyes turned skyward, toward the multi-colored lights that danced alongside the stars. _I wished to show you this_ , during sleepless nights aboard that boat. _We had the chance that others did not of being able to move from one place to another in less time_. But all that turned into naught. He blighted his own hopes and dreams. They both did. Or might they both were victims of the others.

_It wasn't meant to be_ , she said. _That's why we are where we've started_. 

A sour laugh reverberated in his mind. It was finally happening. He too was succumbing to madness.

_There was nothing more destined to be than this_.

* * *

"The lad who brought this said your sister had a child, a girl child," Tormund told him after he, with a wave of his hand, indicated that the new missive he had in his hand should go to the pile of ashes where rested the other ones.

Jon raised his head slightly attentive to what he said. Good news for the North now that the Starks continued to blossom through Ned Stark's offspring. His first living grandchild, a girl. Jon smiled bitterly, not knowing why it caused so much conflict in him. It wasn't as if he ever had the chance – or rather if he did, it was always about the childish infatuation of being Lord Stark's legitimate son and bearing his last name. Things he never was the holder of. 

"I know you're mad at her, but it seems like it's very urgent being as how more often they coming," he sternly stated.

  
Jon looked at him and nodded but remained hushed. They never talked too much about his other life because his friend knew that there was little left of that life to remember fondly. Tormund also knew that his sleepless nights were not without reason, his long grief and joyless nature was something he bore witness to firsthand. 

It was somewhat disturbing that he now wanted him to deal with it.

  
"You know if you want to cross the big puddle to fetch her, I'll be by your side," he added when he was about to leave Jon's tent. There was a look of sympathy on his face. 

Jon replied with a scoffing. What else did he have to offer her? An apology? His own life, which most likely was worthless in front of her eyes? He wasn't even worth the time. 

In the company of his own thoughts, he imagined for a moment that he took the courage to go there, wherever that place was, only to find himself unrequited. She was young and no matter what she says, if the path of being a queen was the one she had decided to follow, then very soon she would have to seal that legacy with an alliance. Or perhaps she had returned to the arms of that lover she left in Meereen. Any place was better than near him, where she would find only ruins. Because that was all he was, and inadvertently he made her that too. 

Someday he might muster the courage to go there just to see if she was right. He did not know if he would have the strength to approach her again but at least he wanted to see at the distance that she was as happy as she deserved to be, perhaps a child in her arms and a life partner at her side.

Guilt and discomfort flooded his body in the form of a petty, alien feeling and Jon smiled but it was brittle. Came to him the fleeting memory of a time when he dared to believe the one who could give her all of that undeterred by her strong attachment to the belief of the supposed curse of a vile woman who had taken advantage of her naivety. Said claims persisted even in the moments of passion they shared. She'd been clever enough to know they didn't have a future ahead. 

_Be with me. Build the new world with me_.

Eyes burned with unshed tears while the same sense of distress filled him and took his breath away. He could still remember the exact moment his arm moved almost unconsciously toward the dagger at his belt, his other arm holding her small form tightly to direct the thrust with precision and not inflict slow, agonizing damage. He hadn't even kissed her the way he was supposed to, his mouth closing over hers tightly and apprehensively knowing what was about to happen and the sin he was incurring into. The way her entire body stiffened and jumped in surprise, her eyes that first widened in confusion and disappointment closed as she looked up at the sky to avoid seeing him. 

It was ironic that only after doing what he believed was his only option did a torrent of other possibilities flood his grieving mind. But no matter what he had done instead, there was so much he hadn't done before that. So many times that she gave him so much and asked for a little in return. Nothing in this life could make up for what she had given and lost. The damage that day was beyond repair.

And there was nothing Jon could do to bring himself some sort of peace.

* * *

He didn't know what to do when it finally happened.

It had been a long time since the taking of Hardhome and their settlement there. Jon's only involvement in the affairs of the tribe consisted of his nocturnal shifts guarding around the harbor, and that particular night had been shrouded in a veil of mist and empty darkness. Ghost provided no company, being in the forest and enjoying the same solitude Jon was infatuated with. A shadow appeared and he was too dazed by his self-absorption to noticing in time the attempt that was about to be made on his life. 

Jon fought it. It was something instinctive that he couldn't finish eradicating from his being. But the moment something sharp dug into the center of his torso, he lost strength or the resolve to fight something that he had been tempting so long ago. He let it be. 

The purpose of this shadow was not to kill him, he would find out later, although the intent may well have led to it. From his previous experience, he would have advised this shadow to cut his throat to finish him off better but instead, it pushed Jon into the icy water, which greeted him like the welcoming arms of a loved one.

_I've been here before_ , it was a single thought that crossed his mind. _I should've known better_ , he understood. 

When dawn came, he opened his eyes to find himself on the riverside. As he could, he got up and walked the distance necessary to reach the settlement. 

Jon only found ruins. 


	7. Senseless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you❤

**"Senseless"**

**Braavos - 316 After Aegon Conquest**

"What is taking them so long?" Arya objected while staring the side entrance where those two had disappeared a half-hour before. 

Ser Davos who was resting in a comfortable seat, gobbling up his supper, let out a snort.

"Years of estrangement," he replied as if saying the most obvious thing in the world.

Arya understood that there were many things between those two to solve before even beginning to envision a reconciliation, but so many years had also left her thirsty for a little time with her brother. And she had never cultivated the art of patience.

She clenched her fingers and looked over at Ser Davos.

"Do you believe there's any hope for them?" she asked him.

The man seemed carefree and distracted by the ceiling decorations. 

"Would you explain to me again how is that you are by her side?" he asked back.

Arya huffed. 

"Destiny brought us together, I think," she simply said, slowly walking around to take a sit across him. As Jon's Hand looked skeptical at her, she explained in more detail about her first meeting with Daenerys and everything that came after that. After it, he just laughed. Hard and loud. 

"Destiny's bidding is still fanciful than not," he concluded. 

Arya couldn't help but agree with him. 

* * *

"All of this doesn't make sense, you know that, right?" Daenerys said it to herself in her mind but it escaped from it in the form of a forceful and loud statement. Still she looked up at Jon Snow in the eye when she did, having switched positions, she sitting and he standing. 

"Everything has a purpose," he retorted. 

A pause for silence in which memories flood both their minds. 

"I wonder," she began to answer, "If the citizens of King's Landing would think the same thing." 

It sounded like something cruel to bring forth but she felt the urge to make it clear that she was aware of her own actions. Maybe to show the world and herself that if she was insane, it was at least her choice to let it get the best of her. 

The last time he saw her she was nothing but a mad woman. He did what the kingsleyer Jaime Lannister did to her mad father. Daenerys wanted to laugh at the irony when she recalled his trail in Winterfell. Jon hadn't care about her concerns about that man. He dismissed the matter as if all the journey to capture the wight had not been in favor of bringing the Lannister army to war against the dead. Which were his words in Dragonpit? She tried to remember them but could only glimpse bits of that statement: enough false promises turn man's words meaningless. And Daenerys was fed up with all of it. 

He knew by the cold stare she gave him that she was thinking him the worst sort of creature roaming the land. Queenslayer. Kinslayer. Oathbreaker. He felt it deep in his bones as many times before when he received the same disdain for his bastard status. Then something changed and her stare became softer and Jon couldn't believe he found himself longing for the contempt rather than the pain in those eyes that spoke louder of his sins against her. 

"They have no greater sympathy for me," he stated in a strangled voice. If what she was trying to do was draw a line between them where he stood on higher ground, then he couldn't be more than happy to let her know otherwise.

She had never given importance to the events that followed her death because she had settled for assuming that it was no better than what had come before. The Starks, somehow, took control of the entire continent. South. North. Beyond. But it was also true that there was a deep-seated discord in the minds of those people. Things that simmered to bursting.

"And why is that? Aren't you the hero that saved them from the Mad Queen?" She teased him for she didn't need too much guesswork to known. 

Jon took his seat again.

"It depends on who I am for them," he explained, "If I'm Jon Snow, I'm just a bastard who did what bastards do. Longing for and stealing what does not belong to me." 

She jerked a little because it still, somehow, caused some annoyance in her. Daenerys herself had never understood with certainty what being a bastard entailed, and the origin of his birth was never important for her to assess his achievements and his person in general.

_Gods_ , she wailed to herself, remembering how much regard she had held for him without a caring.

"The North and the Vale behaved not better tha day," he added. 

"And if you are Aegon?" Daenerys questioned him, bringing a pair of fingers to her chin. "What people think of you if you wear the name your mother gave you in her deathbed?" 

This time he was the one who stirred in his spot, feeling uncomfortable. Why would he feel that way? She wondered. After all, that was the name he carried now to claim a right that always belonged to him. Then she remembered that it was not something he wanted but a weight that had been placed on his shoulders. 

Jon didn't want to think of his mother's demise nor in his true sire who was also her brother. The years had not erased the displeasure that aroused in him feeling the product of such an act. The son of a war. 

"They don't have many reasons to believe that," he said, "Targaryen, Baratheon, Stark or Snow, they don't care anymore. Love for kings has long since faded. All they want is to not have to flee wars every time someone stands up clamoring a right they don't have." But war was also inevitable and even necessary, he understood now. "I'm not talking about your case, if that's what you're thinking," he state, seeing how her gaze had turned away. Actually her mind had returned to that place of remorse and self-punishment. 

Something that she couldn't explain motivated her to share a glimpse of that place with him.

"Sometimes I dream that I walk the streets of King's Landing and let its citizens do whatever they want with me," she said, startling him. "In some of those dreams, they hit me and throw all kinds of things at me, just like they did with Yara Greyjoy, Ellaria Sand, and Missandei, I suppose. In others, dirty hands tear my clothes and proceed to take me. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. I see their faces. Their expressions and their satisfaction." He closed his eyes trying to take his mind away because what he heard made his heart race in despair. She noticed how his entire body tensed. "In my nightmares, I only see children," she continued, looking strangely at him, "And they see me back, their bodies charred, dying, as I try to get closer but they scream and run away from me." Dany tapped her fingers on the table making him open up his eyes. "I admire you for having the courage to stand here. I know you are, above all things, a good man."

There she did it. Draw the line between them.

"You are a good woman," he tried and failed to object because she dismissed him quickly. 

Daenerys stood up and joined her hands in front of her. He followed suit. 

"Your visit has a purpose, King of the Seven Kingdoms and it is not to review the past in search if long-gone prospects. It is advice I give to you: do not look back. I don't have the guts or the gall to set foot in Westeros again."

He frowned. 

"But you did. When you went North and rescued Catrya-"

"Rather a quick affair," she shrugged it off.

"Why you did it?" Jon insisted to know. 

Another moment of tense silence followed up and she smiled tightly and apprehensively. 

"Because Arya asked me to."

"And why should you listen to Arya. Why did you save the daughter of the woman who did everything in her power to see you gone?"

"It does not matter-" she attempted to dismiss again but failed when he roared back,

"It does. Seven hells, it does!" 

She gulped the lump in her throat, as if she was being accused of a crime instead of being challenged for an irrational attitude.

"I would never have lifted a finger to save your sister if that's what you want to know."

"I am certain of that."

She scoffed.

"Arya saved my life little time before. I was just returning the favor. I may be many awful things but ungrateful is not one of them."

This answer seemed to appease him because he refrained from insisting or raising his voice again. His rigid posture sagged and he blinked downward.

"Thank you," he finally said in what it could've been the end of their conversation. 

"I care for her," she found herself resuming, " _Sincerely_. I know more than anyone what it is to be in her place and I would never have allowed the same thing to happen to her."

He looked into her eye and for a moment the deep sense of betrayal, the remorse and the longing for what couldn't be did not mingle with the fierce truth her words conveyed.

"I know," Jon said, low and calm. "I know, Daenerys, I know."

"Are you going to take her?" 

"Westeros is her home," _As it is yours_ , he wanted to say as well but did not find the courage after all she has said. 

She didn't bother to hide the conflict. 

"What a strong word for such a place." She cleared her throat before uttering some mandate her guards heed. Jon didn't need words to understand his time was over. 


	8. Times of War

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much in advance❤

** "Times of War" **

** Winterfell - 309 After Aegon's Conquest **

The Queen in the North Sansa Stark hissed as she rose from her bed, her movements impeded by the growing belly that carried her first child – child she didn't wish to bore but whom she did conceive to meet her duty as queen.

_It hadn't been enough nevertheless_ , she reminded herself. The crown on her head was heavier every day.

Chambermaids and courtesan ladies made their best to bring some relief to their Queen but soon their efforts were dismissed by the own Queen in her increasing surly demeanor.

The door of her bedchamber creaked open, allowing entrance to her Lord Hand.

"Your Grace," he greeted, bowing.

"Begone," Sansa indicated to the women surrounding her. After they left, she asked him; "News of my Lord Husband?"

Her Lord Hand looked at her with a face that suggested no good news. Her mood became even more gloomy.

"There was a clash between the forces of Your Grace and the traitor’s," he informed.

"A clash?" she asked, staggered. He was supposed to negotiate the terms of a truce.

"The King fell, Your Grace," he lamented.

Sansa stumbled upon her bed as the man rushed to hold her. She was trembling as she took one hand to her mouth and the other rested on her protruding belly.

"He killed him? How? How did this happen?" she questioned him.

He proceeded to explain what happened. Her Lord Husband was not the wisest man she could have chosen as a companion, no matter how good a soldier he might have been. Now, not even his skills on the battlefield have helped him.

"Your Grace, we need to send you away,” her Lord Hand urged her on.

Sansa's face turned to him, filled with despair and rage mixed with regret.

"No! I will not abandon Winterfell for the pretenses of a traitor!" Sansa snapped, getting up to walk a few steps and hold onto the railing of the recent settled crib. She had no desire to cry for the man who had borne her child, even though she felt sorry that her son or daughter would never meet him as father. If she faltered now, her child would have no chance. She turned around with a discouraged expression. "Any news from my brother?" 

"Lord Karstark’s men took the Wall, Your Grace, and most people in the Gift support him–"

"Lord Reed's aid?"

"They will not make it in time."

Sansa took a deep breath. Why had Jon not answered her pleading messages? He did not care? He probably hadn't even opened the letters. She was sure that if he had known that his family was in danger, he would have been here at her side.

_He promised it to Father_. 

This was not the time to think about what could have been, she decided. She made her mind.

"Alright," she said, gulping hard. Accepting what was coming and what did imply for her. “You will take my child away," she announced with a firm tone. 

"What?" Her Hand asked, appalled.

"It's the only way," she answered, "They want my head. They want King's Bran head. There's no point of return for us. But my child is innocent of all sin. It deserves to live."

The eyes of her Hand traveled to her belly. "Your grace...I know your child is due any of these days but, it won't make it before Lord Karstark and his men reach our walls."

That, she knew. She clenched her hands into fists feeling her blood run cold in her veins.

"Call the midwife," she ordered.

"What?"

"As you said, my child is to be born any of these days."

* * *

** Northeast, Essos - 310 After Aegon's Conquest.  **

Arya felt something hit the back of her neck and she turned around, wrinkling her nose. Zelan outstretched both arms and gave her a quizzical look. They were at the top of a hill, from whence they kept an eye on the negotiation taking place between two enemy tribes and to which the Dragon Queen was mediatory.

Daenerys’ armies were not there only to merely eke out a living; they created a unique nomadic lifestyle, trekking through the wilderness of the mainland to oversee their Queen’s tenet was followed. In spite of her misstep in Westeros, her legacy in Essos enabled her troops on horseback to be organized easily and travel swiftly through unconquered far-flung territories. 

It wasn't always about conquering cities though. Sometimes, like now, it was about bringing order.

Arya plodded on slowly and Zelan helped her midway. They threw themselves on the ground, letting the thickets keep them out of sight.

“What is happening right now?” Arya asked him.

“The women are relentless,” he remarked with a grin and Arya raised an eyebrow.

The Northeastern Essos was full of small kingdoms and this one was a kingdom made up of women warriors who warred against another clan. It was also the home of a horsemen tribe that unlike the Dothraki, do not milk nor eat their stallions, and who considered it bad manners to walk even when exchanging greetings between one tent and another. 

Their conflict was screwing up the establishment of a trade road necessary to unify the farthest kingdoms with the rest of the free cities.

Arya focused her eyes on Daenerys's small form. Again, she was engaged in the same dance with death, putting herself at unnecessary risk. She scolded herself for even caring. It was actually about Jon. It was all about him. The Dragon Queen had said that the reason for not hurting her was because she would be hurting Jon and a part of Arya understood that the same would happen if something happened to Daenerys –if Arya allowed something to happen to her. 

"Watch that," she warned Zelan when she noticed a person walking towards Daenerys. The Lhazzari soldier became alert and aimed an arrow in that direction. However, this person stood in front of Daenerys and just crouched down, bowing. They settled back. 

* * *

"We are talking about some of the Known World’s greatest rangelands. Many important rivers have their beginning there, providing precious water for the towns along the trade road. It's in the best interest of Her Grace to preserve and manage their rivers source environments as the water from their watershed will be of increasing importance in the future," Magister Gaderon, whispered in her ear discreetly as Daenerys’ eyes fell on the woman who knelt in front of her. "With the garrison in Vaes Dothrak and your association with the new Prince of Qarth, Emperor Pol Qo will find himself cornered and therefore more reluctant to collaborate."

Although Daenerys was listening intently, she was still focused on the curious figure in front of her. 

"I am not interested in going to war with Emperor Pol Qo, but I am not going to allow him to expand on the territories that I declared independent," Daenerys stated with a blunt tone. Her collaborator seemed more inclined to abandon negotiations and go the simpler route -from his perspective. "The pride of a man is never as strong as his avarice. Report to the Emperor's Envoys that I myself will go to Trade Town to negotiate the terms of a trade agreement that will provide a more than fair retrieval for the damages inflicted upon his terminal empire. In the meantime, I want you to keep an eye out for tribal conflicts. I don't want any more hassles while my men work the new trade route."

Magister Gaderon bowed his head in reverence and began issuing orders to the assisting translators. 

"Who are you?" Daenerys asked the woman who had caught her attention. She was wearing a long, deep purple robe, with a tall hat while her face was covered in strange figures. She thought for a moment that these were the slave markings on Volantis, but the color of these marks shone almost golden-like. 

The translator next to her expressed her question in the YI TI language, but the woman did not answer.

Her soldiers on either side of the seat she was occupying waved their spears apprehensively. The woman remained undaunted; eyes so dark they looked black. 

"She is a priestess of the plains, Queen Daenerys," one of the warrior women spoke in a thick-accented bastard Valyrian. 

"A priestess of R'hllor?" Daenerys asked.

"No, your Grace," the young translator beside her quickly replied, "They serve the religion of the Lion of Night."

Daenerys took a deep breath and returned her gaze to the priestess.

"And why doesn't she speak?" she asked this time.

"They are born without a tongue. A price in exchange for the gift provided by the god."

She almost rolled her eyes but then remembered the notion was familiar, after all.

"Ask her about the reasons for her visit then," Daenerys asked the translator. "If it's another zealot, dismiss her."

_Daenerys Stormborn_.

First, she believed it was someone else and looked both ways before realizing that it was the priestess's voice. Not a spoken voice but a voice in her head.

_I know you can hear me, Daenerys Stormborn_. _Hear me out here for my words are the truth you will need in the bleakest times._

Daenerys stood up and climbed down the steps. With a raised hand, she ordered her guards to be held back. It was as if a force was driving her and leading her towards the voice.

The priestess's eyes remained fixed on hers.

_Slain by blood, your dismissal is to usher in a new era of darkness and night._ _The Maiden-made-of-light has turned her back upon the world again and the Lion of Night will come forth in all his fury to punish the wickedness of man._

Her heart raced as the words echoed in her mind and images of the battle against the dead returned to her. Viserion falling from the sky, pierced by the Night King. Ser Jorah slaughtered. She surrounded by the wights.

_We defeated the Night King_. 

She was so close to the priestess now that when she raised both hands, it was almost instinctive to place hers on them. For the first time, she felt her skin burning. 

_Look back, Daenerys Stormborn_.

Then everything went dark and the last thing she could see was an arrow piercing the priestess' heart.

* * *

**Braavos**

"Are you hearing me?" Daario's voice interrupted her ramblings from across the long table.

She sighed wearily.

"I do not need it. A crowning," Daenerys answered, looking at her hand. More specifically to the strange figures that now decorated her skin. When she woke up after meeting the priestess, the marks were there. She closed her hand and looked up. "The free cities are free cities for a reason. All they need to know is that I am watching over them. Guarding and protecting those I liberated." 

Daario looked at her with a scowl in disagreement.

"What better way to watch over them than from your throne. Throne you won."

"What throne? I have no right to anything." _I never did_ , she thought to herself. 

"The Daenerys I knew wouldn't ever say something like that," he remarked.

"The Daenerys you knew died," she reminded him.

“And lived again.” He said in earnest. “You deserved to be celebrated.”

She scoffed. For Daario it was inconceivable that she would not want to return to the life she had before or resume the path that led to her very end.

"You were right once. I give you that, Daario, but I'm done with listening to others' judgement over my own," she reminded him in a sharp tone. "I know who and what I am."

Daario leaned against the back of her chair, throwing her stiletto on the table in frustration.

"Where is the Stark girl?" he asked her when Daenerys had turned her attention back to her hand.

"She decided to stay in a village in the northeast."

"Are you getting attached to her?"

Her brow furrowed and she remembered what happened some weeks ago.

* * *

_"Arya," Daenerys called her, dismissing the guards, healers, and other people who showed up at her tent to make sure she was okay. "Stay," she ordered at Jon's favorite sister. "I want to talk to you about what happened today."_

_The two women looked at each other carefully. The venom only touched her skin, before Arya shot the priestess down, alerting the guards that were nearby to rescue Daenerys from the trance to which she had been subdued to._

_There was no possibility of peace with Emperor Pol-Qo._

_"You saved me," Daenerys stated._

_Arya squinted at her. "I was just standing guard, as you requested.”_

_"You know what I mean. You told me you wouldn't take sides," Daenerys recalled._

_"Well I'm in your army camp, technically I'm already on a side," Arya retorted. Daenerys dropped her shoulders. Seeing the Dragon Queen vexed, she continued, "We have a lot in common. But the most important thing is that we both want Jon to come out of all this unharmed. And what you said about me, that if you hurt me, you hurt him too, the same applies to you. I can't hurt you without hurting him. I can't let harm befall you, because I am hurting him as well."_

_"Doesn't that sound a bit ironic to you?" Daenerys bantered. Arya let it pass._

_"I already told him that you are alive. I am not going back on my words."_

_"I understand then that you plan to see him again."_

_Arya wasn't sure about that and Daenerys noticed how she hesitated before answering._

_"I plan to write to him again and tell him that you are safe and that I am taking care of you. He will feel relieved. And maybe with that, he will have the peace he needs to move on."_

_Daenerys did an incredible job of controlling her emotions, understanding now better how Arya was playing boldly to gauge a response from her. Not that she hadn't made it clear how transcendent this matter was before._

_"Did you know that Jon had a first love? A wildling woman named Ygritte," Daenerys asked her._

_Arya grimaced. "So what?"_

_The Dragon Queen smirked. "People move on, Arya. Not because their little sisters write them letters to reassure them but because that's life. When one is faced with the reality that there is nothing else to do."_

_"You don't know him–"_

_"Yes, I do," Dany declared, looking at her with a sharp stare from her pallet. "_ _Maybe you grew up with him and still hold the memory of an emotional and isolated child who spent his days grieving over the people he lost. Ygritte. His siblings. His father. Myself. We are all only people that he has met at one place and one time and now no longer exists."_

_Arya remained unmoved in her place and let the Dragon Queen vent her sorrows._

_"May the woman that follows me will give him children, and might that woman or those children will live or might they'll die. It is the droll tragedy of life. Everything is temporary and nothing ever lasts."_

_Silence befell them. Then, Arya burst out laughing._

_"You are stubborn, have they told you?"_

_Dany refused to yield to the tingling sensation that wanted to make her smile._

_"Quite a bit, yes," she replied._

_She sighed in exhaustion and threw herself into a chair, throwing her belt with sword and dagger aside. Her big gray eyes fell on Jon's infamous knife tossed in the corner alongside the queen's other belongings, covered by a scabbard decorated with delicate and shining rubies, like those who were said that Prince Rhaegar Targaryen used to wear in his armor._

_The smile fell from Arya’s face and she turned serious._

_"Then you're going to move on too," she said quietly, sparing a glance to the Dragon Queen._

_"I am moving on," Daenerys objected, growing taut._

_"Looks more like you're running away," Arya bantered this time._

_"Careful," Daenerys warned, "Write your letters, do what you want with them but don't come between me and death again."_

* * *

"Daenerys!"

After being startled again by Daario's call, Daenerys considered one more time whether it was really necessary to keep him alive. It wasn't. She believed it never has been, but there was something disturbingly riveting about keeping this piece of her past in front of her to remind her of her faults and what she had lost through them.

Daenerys cleared her throat and answered him;

"What? I zoned out for a moment. What happened?"

Accustomed to her odd detachments, Daario shook his head from side to side and only tossed a piece of parchment in her direction.

"Westeros," he said. 

Daenerys frowned at the small message in her hands. It wasn't that the affairs of this place were ever going to concern her again, but her contacts insisted on letting her know that all was chaos in the sunset kingdoms.

"What does it say?" she asked him before unrolling it.

Daario grinned mischievously at her.

"Queen Sansa Stark was ousted."

* * *

** Pentos **

Dany flew to the only place she was sure she would get some answers. For what his meddling and schemes had implied in her life, Magister Illyrio Mopatis has been the most loyal of the scarce allies she had left. Not loyal to her, of course, but to his own interest.

He had received her with open arms when she appeared at his gates again, shortly after awakening back in this ruinous existence of hers, to claim the few belongings that had remained there from her stay in the previous days of her marriage to Khal Drogo. Although she continued to maintain her reservations regarding his person, Illyrio helped her regain Khal Drogo's dominions in the city. The sense of self-absorption she had sunk into, believing that Westeros was her home – and that once there, she _would be at home_ finally – had made Dany forget the parts of the world where she still had something to call hers.

At first, she hadn't been sure about what to do with this she’s learned. The messages Daario received were always sparse in detail, as she herself tried to keep Westeros as far from her mind as possible. She hoped that Illyrio could bring her up to speed on what was happening in that hostile land where Dany had known nothing but abandonment and scorn at the same time her people and herself were saving the world from the invasion of the dead. She should rejoice in the fact that the hateful and treacherous woman who did all in her power to see Dany gone, would have ended up just like Dany herself. What couldn’t she, then?

_I’ll have to deal with Arya now_ , that’s what she knew. Tell her that her sister had been deposed and was most likely dead. And the likelihood filled Daenerys with conflicting emotions.

Illyrio welcomed her on his large terrace with exquisite dishes and aromatic teas primed for the regal visitor. Daenerys appreciated the gesture but went straight to the matter that brought her to his door again.

"Things have not been easy for the kingdoms in the west, my dear Daenerys. With a broken king and a broken realm, things could not end otherwise. Before Aegon the Conqueror, Westeros was plagued with small wars between petty kings from petty kingdoms. After Aegon, it was only natural things would return to their original state. The rebellion of the Ironborn in the West. Riot due to scarcity in major cities – I have heard that King's Landing has become a kingdom of its own, where the kinslayer imp and his entourage of dregs and oathbreakers hold the capital as the last remnant of an era that is coming to an end. Sunset Kingdoms, the name is nothing but assertive!"

"As much as I’m happy with the news that my enemies are paying for their felony, my interest is in the northernmost kingdom, where as far as I knew, not a king but a queen ruled."

"Land of hostility and harsh tempers, I was told," Illyrio ventured.

Dany didn't answer.

"The story is not very different, although it is more colorful, as it is more about a misstep than a failure sung like that of her brother, the Broken King," Illyrio continued with joyous humor, "Queen Sansa Stark, from a tremendous resilience _as I have been told_ , was considered the last true scion of the dynasty of the wolf blood. How many years did she rule? Four or five? Prosperous at first, the wind blew in her favor, _or so I was told_. Young and beautiful but tough as the land that nurtured her. Her greatest mistake, _I was told_ , was being excessively arrogant."

At that moment she wondered if the same stories were _being told_ about her. Here in Essos, she had never really left. No one could place her as the Mad Queen because here she was Mhysa.

The Mad Queen was just a story. Mhysa was alive and on this side of the Narrow Sea.

For this reason, Illyrio pretended not to be aware that they are indeed the same person and that Daenerys knew the Starks firsthand – she had lost her life at the hand of one of them.

"It was a man, of course, who set out to deter Her Majesty's immodesty. A distant cousin, I've heard. I don't know about the particulars of the conflict that unleashed a wave of dissatisfaction across the North, but whatever it was, it must have been powerful, because today the winter throne is occupied by that man and Queen Sansa Stark is dead."

* * *

Her thoughts were elsewhere when she realized that the temperature around her had dropped sharply. She had dressed appropriately for the arid climates of northern Essos but instead of going east, she found herself veering west.

_Look back, Daenerys Stormborn_. 

* * *

**Winterfell**

Dany commanded Drogon to fly over the Castle of Winterfell to announce her arrival. After that, she landed in the opposite direction to the small town outside Winterfell, knowing that people there would react badly as they did the first time when she came to save them. With Drogon now much larger, the shadowy fortress seemed smaller.

She was struck by the absence of the distinctive direwolf emblem hanging from the battlements. Instead, she frowned as she saw another house's banner fluttering: a blazon of a white sunburst with a black background. She did not remember exactly what House it belonged to.

Truth be told, Dany wasn't quite sure what she was doing there either. It was all about a damn impulse. At first, she thought it correct to immediately fly to the camps and alert Arya to her sister's death, and it even crossed her mind to transport the young girl back to her homeland. But then, Dany realized that she couldn't do that. Her years as a victim of the malice of a usurper taught her that home could turn into dangerous ground if it was taken by enemies. And the way she saw it, Winterfell had been taken...again.

Soldiers were stationed outside the castle, prepared to defend it from an attack that could end in a matter of minutes if she wanted to. However, Dany had no intention of burning down the castle. Not today.

A man stood out from the armed men and she deduced that he must be either a general or the very subject of the stories. _The traitor_. He looked like a mature man, older than her by several years and fierce at first sight. Like all northern men, he wore a long beard and his gaze was penetrating and dark even from afar.

He stood there for a moment as if waiting for some movement until he finally realized that she was not accompanied by an army.

_If only he knew that I take cities all the time with just the strength of my dragon_. But he should know, she supposed, after all, the Northern Army had taken King’s Landing at her command as well.

Drogon snarled as the man stood only at a distance from them. Ever since that time at Red Keep, he hadn't liked men getting too close to his mother.

"Where is Sansa Stark?" Daenerys questioned him, knowing what answer she would receive.

The man stood still and unanswered, even as Drogon let out another of his growls. After long minutes of silence, he spoke to invite her into the castle – voice sounding alien to her as she had forgotten the thick accent of those here, but anyway she refused his invitation. Dany just needed answers so then she would go away never to return. The affairs of this dire place no longer concerned her.

"You will be protected by the guest right. On this land, that is a sacred oath," he argued.

"Just answer me, where is Queen Sansa Stark?" Daenerys insisted, more and more impatient. 

Instead, he introduced himself, "My name is Harrion. Harrion of House Karstark, Dragon Queen."

* * *

With Drogon closely stalking the towers of Winterfell, Dany finally agreed to get inside the ancestral home of the Starks, again. It was a strange feeling that overtook her when she walked once more its damp dirt roads and long corridors that contrasted in warmth with the cold outside. The years had done little to keep the memory fresh of those days when she seemed more like a ghost walking down those halls looking for something that would never be found.

Harrion Karstark spoke in front of his men as soon as they reached Great Hall, saying, "This woman is under my protection. And if that is not enough, the dragon that looms over the walls is going to make it more clear to you." He turned around and looked at her. "I imagine that such a beast will be more than happy with a late meal," he jested.

Few smiled.

"Do I have the word of Her Grace that we will receive the same treatment?"

Daenerys ran her eyes around the room where sharp glances threw daggers in her direction. It was not the first time nor would it be the last.

She nodded.

* * *

Lord Karstark took her to his chambers, which were the same ones Dany visited a couple of times in search of Jon. Nothing had changed much, except for a painting of considerable size where the image of Sansa Stark was painted.

_Queen Sansa Stark_.

"I've seen to it she had a proper burial," Lord Karstark whispered, standing next to her as the maids were preparing the table for supper behind them. 

Dany glanced at him.

"So, you are a queenslayer."

He returned a serious-eyed look. His posture did not remind her at all of Jon, who always seemed to walk with a heavy gait.

"I am many things, Dragon Queen but I respected Lord Eddard Stark and his family," he stated, outraged. "I fought for him when I left home. My sister Alys stood the last moments beside Brandon to protect him from the dead." He sighed. "Or so I was told. I wasn't here."

"No, you weren't," Daenerys agreed and scowled at him. 

When the tableware was ready, they sat waiting for the food. She had learned to live on the road, so she was not hungry. But she was thirsty.

Lord Karstark poured what appeared to be mulled wine into her goblet.

"Have you ever been to Maidenpool, Your Grace? Your latest visit was rather a quick affair they said.”

He handed the drink to her.

Dany moved the goblet a bit and sniffed its contents before finally taking a sip. It still tasted just as horrible as the first time she tasted it. She took a second sip and lowered it.

"We can chat all night or we can speak about it forthrightly."

Lord Karstark nodded.

"I didn't kill the Queen. I didn't intend to come all this way and sit tonight and sup with Daenerys Targaryen. You never think that certain decisions are going to get you that far."

"What decisions?"

"To ask questions."

"Questions led you to seize power in the North?" she asked him, ironically.

Servants interrupted their response, arriving with trays. Dany recognized one of them, who lowered her gaze immediately when she studied her closely.

  
Jane maybe was her name.

"Most of the things were uncertain in the aftermath. My whole family died but that was the story of everyone around here," he said starting to chew on his meal. Dany chose to listen to carefully. "We celebrated. Finally…we cut away from those bastards and their petty wars." He paused to wipe his mouth as Dany took the opportunity to take from her plate. "I am proud of my people. I would have died for the name of the Starks. But those children? Brandon? Sansa? Arya? Jon Snow? Who they were? There was not a hint of the wolf blood in them." 

Dany stopped mid-meal with a confused expression. Harrion spoke with such confidence that she wanted to believe him. 

His gaze turned dark.

"Queen Sansa died giving birth. _Forcing herself to give birth_. And it killed her and her child in the end. When I arrived in Winterfell, she was dead, resting in her bed in a pool of blood as red as her hairs," he revealed. 

Dany lost her appetite. She pushed the plate away and took a long sip as she tried to process the sudden amount of information.

"What elicited these events?" she finally asked him. "Last time I was here, she ruled the place and subjects were fond of her."

Or maybe it was the hatred for Daenerys and her people that gave that impression.

"Her decisions," Harrion replied. "She was respected. Loved. She would have made a good ruler for the North...If she had remained Lady of Winterfell." He sighed again and this time shook his head regretfully. "I wasn't here when the retaking happened. I wasn't here because I was rotting in a cell in Maidenpool, left behind after I blindly followed the Young Wolf war for revenge." As he spoke, he went more and more absent, staring at the floor with a distant look. "Alys was just a girl. I cannot blame her. She had no reason to believe I was still alive." Then he blinked and eyes returned to Dany. "Only when you died, and there were no more rulers, they liberated me. So, I thank you for that." 

Daenerys cocked an eyebrow. 

"I came back home expecting to...find home. But what I found was a bunch of people invading my family's castle, claiming it was giving to them by Her Majesty herself. I came here and politely demanded my lands back and she said that things were different now. She offered me lands in the Gift and I said no. I just wanted my bloody home back." His eyes fell on the table, regretfully. "She refused. Over and over again."

"So you rebelled," Dany guessed.

"I started making questions," he differed. "Questions she and her followers were not happy with. They sent after me and called me a traitor. You must know what are the fate of that sort of people."

Indeed, she knew.

"And what questions did you make?"

Harrion shrugged. 

"Questions we were all making," he replied. "She believed that she could wear the crown and not be bound to it. Her best allies were the Glovers, whose men had stayed safe within his fortress walls when they were needed most." He leaned on the back of his chair and glanced at her. "Apparently Lord Robett did not like that our king had bent the knee."

Dany wasn't aware of that but another wave of regret washed through her.

_All my Unsullied and Dothraki, sacrificing themselves for people who were unwilling to give up their pride for the greater good_. 

"Snow never told you that, I take," he huffed. 

Dany said nothing. 

"Speaking of...what are you doing here? Is it true then? Was it all a wile...that you were killed?" He said, frowning at her.

Like other times, she avoided answering that question.

"I have Arya Stark with me," she revealed. "Before I go to her with this news, I prefer to know first-hand that it is true. Now that I do, soon she will know what happened and is happening here. And, my Lord, I feel sorry for you for the day that the young she-wolf returns home to retaliate."

Although he was not intimidated, he did take her words in a serious note, she could tell. 

"I understand that the alliance between you and the Starks still stands then?"

"No," Dany stated. "My interest was just to know. Now that I know, may you rest easy, my Lord."

"So isn't Your Grace returning to Westeros?"

Daenerys smiled, but not in a friendly gesture but full of irony.

"I think Westeros has enough."

* * *

"You can stay for the night. We may not like being invaded by foreigners, but at the end of the day most of these men respected your authority when they marched for King's Landing," said Harrion Karstark as the large gates to the courtyard opened, revealing a cold, snowy night.

Daenerys had been dead. Neither cold nor fire seemed to have an effect on her in the same way.

"That won't be necessary, but I appreciate it," she replied, hearing the shrieks of an impatient Drogon waiting for her outside the walls.

Lord Karstark insisted once more but finally gave up, walking with her to the barbican.

When Dany was ready to walk out of Winterfell never to return, a voice interrupted her way out.

"Your Grace," she called. It was the woman who served her their supper, whom she thought she remembered as Lady Jayne. She bowed to Lord Karstark, and Dany did not know for a moment if she had addressed her or the man. "It will be a blustery night, Your Grace. Is it too much to ask that you allow me to present this cloak as recognition for her contribution to the great war?"

"That won't be necessary," Daenerys insisted again.

Lord Karstark – or king, now she understood, stepped aside and allowed the woman to walk towards Daenerys, with an expression of ambivalence as to whether or not she would accept the gift.

Dany took a few steps back and Drogon behind her warned the Lady with a low grunt.

"I'm just..." she said, voice trembling and swallowing hard, "I'm just going to put this around your shoulders if I'm allowed."

Dany took a deep breath, looking past where the man was standing, watching for a moment with curiosity. Finally, she nodded and allowed the woman to wrap the dark cloak around her shoulders while her eyes remained on Lord Karstark's.

The recounting of what happened to Sansa Stark had not had the effect she had hoped for. She was neither happy nor triumphant and could even feel a hint of sorrow for such a circumstance. She thought of Rhaella bleeding to death in childbirth.

But there was something else, something that she had neither the courage nor the time to inquire but could sense in the harsh gaze of the Northerner. The pretense of being a man indifferent to power – contrasted with the true disinterest that she knew in Jon Snow.

No. This was not a man who rose with uncomfortable questions and ended up usurping the castle of the queen who had taken his home away. There was more about him he wasn’t giving away.

Dany waited to mount Drogon before saying a few last words.

"This doesn't end here, you know?" She asked him as she looked in the direction where she thought The Wall was. "I may not be raising an army to defend the Starks never again. But rest assured, Lord Karstark, if any damage befalls Jon Snow," she said, lowering her eyes to him, "I will turn the North to ashes."

With that last warning, Drogon roared before spreading his wings and taking into the dark sky.

* * *

Dany quickly felt heavy with the clothes. She ordered Drogon to land for a moment, ready to shed the cloak she had been given. When she undid the laces that held the piece of clothing together, an object fell onto Drogon's scales.

It was a scroll.

She scowled hard before unrolling it.

_Catrya. Greywater Watch_. 

* * *

** Northeast, Essos. **

" _Qana-laes!_ " _The sharp-eyed_. That was the name she had earned after saving Daenerys' life by perfectly shooting an arrow that stroked the priestess' heart. It could have ended badly had Arya miss the target and instead hit the Dragon Queen's heart. She was good – very good – and this new fame within the queen's men had served her well to continue integrating and learn more about their cultures. 

She was skinning her game that day, some variety of whistling hare that abounded in those parts when one of the queen's soldiers approached, calling her.

"Queen Daenerys requests the _Qana-laes_ ," he said in the little common tongue he spoke.

_Had she already returned?_ She asked herself. She hadn't seen her since the incident with the priestess, and that had been several moon turns ago. Arya guessed it had to do with the impending confrontation with the emperor's forces, though she had guessed before that Daenerys would take care of it on her own, with fire and blood.

In any case, it made no sense for her to summon Arya. Generally, their encounters occurred because Arya would visit her tent from time to time to question some of her decisions and give her advice that Daenerys had not requested – but that she would abide by anyway when she found it useful.

Arya arrived once more at the tent settled in the middle of the camp, which was always ready for her eventual arrivals. She greeted the guards who already knew her, and they opened the flaps to allow her the pass.

The most unlikely scenario greeted her. There, nestled on her pallet between furs and pillows, lay the dragon queen with an infant. 

Arya scoffed. 

"What is this?" she asked in reference to the girl, who upon hearing her voice turned her face and looked at her with her eyes that from a distance were a bright blue that for Arya felt strangely familiar. The children around there didn't look like this girl. Her skin was white as snow and her hair crimson like blood. 

Her hands clenched into fists feeling apprehension squeeze her chest.

Daenerys looked at the baby and then at Arya, sighing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled hard writing this chapter. 
> 
> It's hypocritical of me to have done it this way because one of the things I hated the most about season 8 was how Sansa and Daenerys were put into a nasty fight. That is why I wanted the problem to arise not as a punishment for her character but as a consequence of her own decisions. Sansa's character is quite arrogant on the show, so it seems consistent to me that she will eventually collide with her own vassals in the way that Robb before, and Jon with his Night Watch brothers. I didn't want to dwell too long on it either because I don't want to extend the story.


	9. Far From Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you❤

** "Far From Home" **

** Braavos, Essos – 316 After Aegon's Conquest **

The clatter of Daario's stiletto against the table was worsening Arya's headache and for a moment, she seriously considered cutting off his hand or at least a few fingers to stop him for once from being an annoying dunce. 

Trying to ease the tension in the silence, Ser Davos cleared his throat before saying, "Lord Baratheon sends his greetings."

Arya's face turned over at him abruptly. "Is Gendry safe?"

She thought of him fondly even after all those years – her old friend and occasional lover. With the turmoil that washed over Westeros in recent years and with him in a compromising situation, she could only hope for him to have been through all of it safe and sound.

"Very alive he is," Ser Davos replied, eyes staring at her knowingly from his place on the folding chair. His hands rested lazily on his full belly.

Before she could inquire more about Gendry’s whereabouts, footsteps echoed from the corridor attached to the Throne Room, where Daenerys and Jon had disappeared before.

Arya's heart raced when she saw Jon again, returning alone, with a slow and distressing gait, looking just as raddled as she saw him when he left. 

_The meeting had not resulted in any progress for them_ , she noticed. 

She broke through his guards to give him a hug. When they both pulled away from the embrace, Arya looked beyond him in search of Daenerys.

"Where is she?" she asked him. 

"She is coming," he answered, his voice coming out hoarse and stifled.

Arya took note a second time of the aging of her brother, being the first time when they reunite in Winterfell before the great war against the Night King and his army of dead. She could only imagine the sorrows he continued to endure after that, and which seemed to give no rest to his broken mind.

"So, this is the fabled bastard of the North," came Daario's disruption from behind. 

"Piss off, Daario," Arya shouted at him before he could start heckling Jon.

Her protective instincts soared before she could tell it but it was Jon who stepped forward and responded to Daario's words.

"Daario Naharis?" Jon inquired him.

Daenerys' soldier smiled sardonically.

"You know my name," he said.

"Daenerys mentioned you a couple of times. _The fabled sellsword_."

The two men who shared a story with the same woman stared at each other for a long time, filling the room with tension. Jon was exaggerating about Daenerys mentioning him. Actually, he knew who Daario was because he happened to have overheard Tyrion talking about him with Daenerys in that distant time when they hadn't even begun to be intimate. It should have been in some conversation he snatched, although he couldn't remember exactly when it happened.

"Daario," Dany's voice cut off their exchange of sharp stares, forcing all of them to turn around to find her standing just at the beginning of the corridor, with her hands clapped at her front.

She wore a strained look against Daario. Not that manners worked with him Daenerys was aware. She quickly moved to deal with the Starks.

"I suppose now it's time for you to meet your niece," she said, looking at Jon with serious eyes.

* * *

As they marched at a uniform pace towards the place where her niece awaited them, Jon did his best to keep his mind focused on the strange surroundings to not let apprehension engulf him with its void. As they approached a secluded section that followed the entrance to a garden with pools, he finally felt it all too overwhelming to continue. Arya who was walking next to him, held his arm when it looked like he was about to faint.

Ahead of them, guards prepare to assist and Daenerys turned around with a concerned expression.

"I'm fine," Jon said, pulling away from his sister to walk near to a fountain, sitting on its basin. The sound of the splashing helped to put at ease the invasive restlessness. When he looked up, his eyes met Dany's.

"Would you give us a moment?" Arya requested. "... _Your Grace_."

"Of course," Daenerys agreed, still worried but overall understanding. "I'll be inside," she apprized them.

"Thank you," Jon said truthfully as Dany glanced at him before leaving, making her way to the quarters where Catrya was kept.

Arya sighed as she witnessed the scene. She always supposed they still cared for each other, but now she has attested it. And they were utterly broken – too much to heal and yet not enough to lose all hope, she wanted to believe.

She swallowed hard and tried to get back to where she was now. This broken part of Jon, something they shared, had nothing to do with Daenerys.

"How do I–How do I do this?" he asked with his forehead resting on his left hand as he rubbed the sharp lines of expression.

Davos opened his mouth to reply but closed it immediately after, preferring to give the moment to the siblings.

"Calm down. Breathe. I know it's hard – It's been for me as well, at first," Arya replied, on her haunches in front of him. Although he was not crying, his contorted face spoke loudly of the suffering he contained within. It was the same one that Arya carried with herself since that evening she learned that she had a niece but no longer a sister.

"I'm so sorry," he said quietly, shaking his head and looking at his folded hands.

Arya sighed. "Jon. Stop, please. We cannot change what happened. Old and New Gods know I've been there too."

It was a pending conversation between them, perhaps even a matter that they would not stop discussing until late in their lives. Either way, Arya didn’t want to see him harrowing himself for it the rest of them.

"Daenerys offered me a ship to return by the time it could have mattered and I chose not to. We all be at fault at some point," she admitted.

Although Jon was unaware of it, the information did not come as surprise for him. Ever since he learned that Arya had been in here – and made it out of it alive – he understood that he had fallen into a misinterpretation of Dany's intentions back in time, at least in regards to himself and his family.

Looking at Arya, he wondered if she thought the same now.

"In that room, there are two people whose lives I ruined," Jon said quietly.

"You didn't ruin Daenerys'," Arya lied as she tried to reassure him. "And if it so. She ruined yours as well." 

In that, she was right. However, he didn't want to talk to Arya about it. It was too personal and painful, and the conversation with Dan– _Daenerys,_ had only opened a scar that never healed completely.

Instead, he moved the conversation to what brought them together.

"How it was? The first time you met our niece?"

Arya blinked and looked down a moment. Then she smiled at what was a distant, grim and mostly bitter memory.

* * *

Dany walked into the foyer at a heavy pace, her head thrown back as she rubbed the tension in her neck and kept her eyes closed. When they opened, they looked at the ceiling.

"Make sure everything is ready and suitable for their stay, I don't know how long that will be but let it be received accordingly," she indicated to Daario, who was walking a few steps behind her.

"You shouldn't be doing this," he replied, though he had no doubt Daenerys wouldn't change her mind. The part of his heart that was still soft for her, got him admitting, "I can see it, the reason why you fell hard."

She blinked in confusion, craning her neck to glare at him. "See what exactly?"

He scoffed, walking past her in the other direction she was heading. There where Daario no longer fit as a lover and lacked the aptitude to be taken seriously as a counselor, at least he seemed to fit as a friend.

* * *

"Queen Dany? Is it you?" a soft, childlike voice asked. Dany smiled when she heard it.

Catrya walked into the room where they would wait for her aunt and uncle, two guards escorting her and keeping a watch on her.

"Princess," Daenerys answered when they saw each other. Catrya crossed the distance that separated them, running towards her and hugging her from the waist. Dany put a kiss on the top of her head.

The girl pulled away and looked at her with curious eyes, full of emotion. "He is here? My uncle Jon?"

Dany’s smile swayed a little as a violent wave of emotion washed through her and make the walls around her heart rattle. The consequences of this violence could be seen in the trembling of her hands when they stroke Catrya's crimson hair behind her ears. The memory of Sansa Stark lingering in the image of her daughter. It was all too much for Daenerys and yet she endured it – for herself to prove she could bear it and get stronger, and for this child, in whom she saw what might have been of her if someone like herself had appeared in her life before it was too late.

"Hmm-mm. He's outside, preparing," Dany confirmed. 

"Am I pretty?" she then asked, gesturing for Dany to inspect her gown, which was of a blue-gray color embroidered with red leaves like those that characterized the trees of the northern lands. Dany would have had wolves sewed in the fabric but the memory didn't make her happy yet, so she instead chose the leaves.

"Yes, you are," she said, pinching softly her right cheek, eliciting a giggle.

"Wouldn't he mind I lost my teeth?"

Dany laughed gingerly. She had been losing her milk teeth and this last week she had been mortified by the fall of one of the upper fronts.

"Of course, he won't, little lady," she assured, "You are as pretty as you've always been."

"Queen Dany," Catrya called back to her, her utterance affected by the missing tooth.

"Hmm?"

"Will you be with me? When he enters?"

Another squeeze on her chest.

"He's your uncle, your family. You must not be afraid. He loves you already," she told her, and herself, remembering that no matter how beautiful the fantasy felt, this was always destined to happen. The departure was bound to happen. "Besides, your aunt Arya is there too–"

"But will _you_ stay, please?" And her blue eyes sparkled pleadingly.

Dany nodded, heart cracking with each passing moment that wavered toward the inevitable separation.

"I will," she promised.

* * *

After Arya finished recounting about the time Daenerys returned with Catrya, Jon found himself rubbing his eyes as he tried to hide the tears welling up. He couldn’t help but wonder…what if? What would have happened if Daenerys hadn’t been there? How long Lord Reed could have kept the babe safe without Harrion coming around eventually?

He cursed repeatedly in his mind. No amount of words or kingdoms would pay for everything Daenerys had done for him – _for them_. And perhaps that was the reason why she kept her distance, for the last time she tried to take what he offered her in exchange for her help, or rather because he believed it was the right thing to do, she ended up hurt in every way possible.

"Are you ready?" Arya busted into his thoughts with her question.

"Aye," he replied, gathering himself. What was the point if the damage was done? Unlike Dany, with Catrya he still had a chance to make things right – retrieve her stolen home and give her a proper family.

Finally, they stood inside the quarters where his niece had been living for the last year when Dany settled in Braavos. Before that, Pentos and long before, Jon only knew that they had been in all the Free Cities at least once.

Catrya had come too far to be a Stark, and for that, he was pleased.

More elegance and novelty received him inside the rooms where they found Daenerys with Catrya at her side, both sitting in a long settee from which they stood as soon as they saw him, in a mannerism that made no sense to him but he had used to receive for his status. Well, it was the way Sansa would have raised her, with all those ladylike ways and good manners, he supposed.

Good gods, he thought at seeing the child. She was the spitting image of her late queen mother. She was only in her seven namedays if he had counted them right, but she was all tall and graceful in her posture as a little lady. And of course, the Tully’s red hair shrouding her shoulders and chest.

His niece's eyes were wide with the impression of seeing him, he noticed, but she still stood tall and straight like a soldier waiting to receive an order. Indeed, it wasn’t until Dany cleared her throat that she blinked away the impression and bowed curtly.

"Won't you say anything?" Dany asked her, voice lightly amused. She looked up at him. "King Jon, may I present you, Lady Catrya of House Stark and Glover,” she looked down at the child with a smile, “Lady Catrya, King Jon of the Seven Kingdoms."

It did not go unnoticed to him that she did not use either Stark or Targaryen to name him.

Arya arched an eyebrow at her niece and surreptitiously waved a hand, signaling her to take a few steps forward. "Jon is your uncle," she said, mannerless in comparison to her niece or the Dragon Queen.

"You _v_ Grace," Catrya spoke softly, hesitating a bit due to the missing tooth that had fallen out a few days ago. You could feel the nervousness of the child.

Jon chucked a bit, equally clumsy. "My lady."

"Have your journey been..." she began to ask but then she squinted her eyes trying to remember the word. She turned around to look for Daenerys’ aid.

" _Pleasant_ ," Daenerys whispered.

Catrya whipped her face and asked properly, "Have your journey been pleasant?"

Jon glanced at Arya with a slight smile.

"Yes, my lady, it's been," he stuttered, taking a deep breath midsentence, almost too overwhelmed. "May I..." Jon advanced but Catrya backed away, approaching Daenerys' side while eyes fixed on Arya's as if wanting to apologize.

_Alright that was too sudden_ , Arya thought. 

Dany patted Catrya's lower back and looked at Jon with an apologetic look. There was a lot of tension in the room. 

"This is Ser Davos, a friend we have known for many years," Jon blurted out, pointing to his old Hand.

Davos frowned before stepping forward, hands folded behind his back in his characteristic stance and saluting with a slight bow. He was good with children, Jon recalled, troubled by the embarrassment. Indeed, Davos made a comment regarding the leaves in Catrya’s embroidery, telling her about the weirwood trees – something Jon’s missed until his Hand pointed it out.

The girl's face lit up, buoyed up by the comment.

"Would you like to sit with us and have some tea, uncle–" she trailed off "Can–can I call you uncle?"

Jon smiled incredulously. "Yes," he responded, and then, a little bit more empathetic, "Yes!" 

* * *

The first impression of being reunited with Jon had been put aside and the regret of knowing that soon everything would end had also numbed for her as she watched the scene before her eyes.

Just as the seething anger that had absorbed her was followed by desolation, Dany was once again surrendering to defeat and simple acceptance of things.

This was not her family. Whatever idea she had wanted to hold in her mind, she dispelled in time before it could create in her again – that same feeling that caused her end.

She had already been through it too many times to be once again debased. But not enough to feel nothing at all.

Like with everything else, Dany just let it be.

* * *

_Queen Dany_. Arya wanted to make fun of that name, nobody but Catrya was allowed to call Daenerys that way. Although she never heard Jon speak to her like that, she was sure he had the same pass. 

She bit off a piece of her dry cake and sat on her haunches atop the settle. Catrya and Daenerys shot her a sharp look, scolding her to sit well. Arya rolled her eyes. The formalities weren't for the family.

_Family_ , she thought amusingly. In a way, that's what they were. As broken as they were, they were the last of great dynasties and houses that were now on the brink of total demise, and in the middle of it all, Jon, who was a Stark and a Targaryen alike. 

Arya wanted them to remain like that for much longer. Drinking exotics beverages from Essosi lands and eating sweets, with reality blocked behind the doors, for she knew that sooner or later they would have to face it.

She watched Catrya pour more tea on Jon's cup and lift the saucer with the utmost delicacy as Mother and Septa Mordane had once taught her and Sansa. If it had been up to Arya, Catrya would have learned only the theories of it though even that Arya couldn't remember clearly. Her hands were better at skinning game than at making tea. Maybe that's why Daenerys, who was a queen, had managed much better in that regard.

_Gods, Sansa, you really were very hard on her_ , she found herself admitting in her mind as she watched Daenerys discreetly motion for Catrya to shake the crumbs off her lap.

At first, the idea had infuriated her, that Daenerys could try to occupy her sister's place. However, over time it had been inevitable. Arya did not want to be a mother – as she did not want to be a lady. With her, her niece would always know about her family, the North, and water dance but where she failed or could not meet the expectations of a mother figure, Daenerys had fulfilled the role with ease.

Catrya lost her mother when she came to this world and if things did not go well between Jon and Daenerys, then she would lose another.

Arya and Ser Davos' eyes met, perhaps with the same conclusion crossing their minds.

* * *

"Are we going back to Westeros?"

The question has taken him aback.

Jon was clear about one thing at the beginning of this journey – he was bringing his niece home. In the same way, he had naively believed that Dany would consider his offer, not because she wanted to have something to do with him but because it was her home as well. 

"Aunt Arya told me that Winterfell is mine by right and that one day we were going to come back," Catrya explained, kneeling in front of the petite table and with her little hands resting on the glass of it. A few moments ago, she had felt cold and Daenerys ordered a shawl to be brought from her bedchamber. "Queen Dany can come with me, right?"

Nobody replied.

"I will visit you from time to time," finally Daenerys said, approaching to place a hand on Catrya's shoulder.

"Actually, Catrya, I was thinking that maybe you should live with me for a time until you are old enough to claim Winterfell," Jon also hurried on.

Catrya scowled hard, probably sensing that she was about to receive a new she won’t like. "Why I'm not old enough?"

"He means you're still a child," Arya cut in. "It is best if you are with him while you prepare to be the Lady of Winterfell, like your mother before you–" 

"But my mother was a queen, wasn't she?"

Was not lost on him the way she turned to Daenerys, and not Arya, whenever she had a question. 

"Yes, she was but I united the Seven Kingdoms into one and now I am the only King," Jon explained, not so proudly.

Catrya looked down at her hands, thoughtfully. "So…I'm not a princess anymore," she stated.

"You want to be a princess?" Jon asked her.

The question seemed to leave her stunned, although it could well be that she was trying to sort in her tender mind the vast amount of information she was receiving so suddenly.

After long minutes of tense-filled silence, she said, "I just want to know if Queen Dany can come with us? She has a dragon, do you know? She can fly us fast to anywhere we want to go. His name is Drogon."

Jon glanced at Daenerys but she avoided his gaze.

"Catrya," Arya called her name with a pleading voice, leaning with her elbows on her knees to explain to Catrya, "Daenerys is a queen, and she needs to stay and rule over her people here in Essos–"

"But you promise me you'll be with me!" Catrya faced Daenerys, turning sharply in her direction not caring that Arya was speaking to her. Then she got up off the floor and snapped at Jon, "I don't want to leave if Queen Dany can't come. I don't want to!"

"Catrya," Daenerys called her softly but Catrya was already running towards somewhere Jon could only guess were the chambers. "Follow her," she told two tall guards.

Servants quickly rushed into the room to remove the tableware all the while the four of them got up with contrived expressions.

"I'm going to talk to her, make her understand..." Dany said as if she was apologizing, vacant eyes staring at the floor.

"No," Arya stopped her, looking with contempt between the two of them, “She won't want to see any of you right now.” She headed towards the chambers but not before saying, “The thing between the two of you… _sort it out now_. She's just a child, she cannot understand the ways of our fucked-up world."

* * *

Jon found Daenerys at the landing of the stairs, just as he remembered finding her a time ago in the battlements of Dragonstone. This time, she was sitting on the windowsill, looking out through it, no guards around. 

He remained on the steps, without climbing them completely.

"I was thinking about what you told me about home," she broke the silence, aware of his presence. "You know what they called me here before? _Foreign whore_. And in Westeros, they called me the same name." 

His heart ached for her. Jon knew what it felt to be called something that was meant to demean you until all you are certain about is that you are worthless.

He heard her sighed wearily. "The Valyrians once ruled these lands just as the Targaryens ruled Westeros. But now none of them exist, nor is there a place in the world where I have a place."

"That's not true." _And it's never been_ , but he wasn't the right person to say it. "You belong where people need you."

She laughed hoarsely. "So that's all I am. A divine device." She smiled at him – not sympathetically. Her eyes looked defeated. "I remember very well that Tyrion used to worry that the notion would go to my head."

"Tyrion had no idea of anything. Not even a small part."

"Something tells me he knew enough to stay alive," she surmised. "What happened to him?"

"He died."

"You killed him."

Jon couldn't bear it anymore, so he admitted, "That day, I visited him. Before it happened."

Clarity struck at her senses. "He was the one who convinced you."

"He just voiced out my thoughts," Jon let her know the full truth. He sighed regretfully then. "It wasn't fair. I shouldn't have even gone."

She raised an eyebrow. "Oh, but you went. You went and begged for his life after seeing all the damage he had done."

"It wasn't like that in my eyes but I could see now that I was wrong."

"An error in judgment," she mocked him. "You made a lot of those. What makes you think you're not doing another right now?"

"I made many mistakes, it is true. But even back then I always had a reason to believe something or someone was good, and now I have it too."

Her gaze was suspicious and mistrustful. However, she accepted his answer. Daenerys also believed that she was good until finally, she was not, at least of that she convinced herself of.

For all he knew, she still was the person he bent the knee to on that boat. At some point, she got lost but deep beneath her resistance, she was there.

"Why did you kill Tyrion?" Dany asked him.

He rested on the steps. "Because he should have been dead a long time ago."

"Maybe us too."

"No one is going to bring him back."

"Lucky imp."

The two of them found themselves smiling with amusement but hiding the gesture so that the other would not notice.

There was strange tranquility now that the day was drawing to a close as if the reunion had been a heavy burden on their shoulders that was now relieved. But it was only an illusion for the burden had only been renewed.

"Dragonstone," Jon blurted out.

Daenerys whipped her face. "What?" 

"At least let me give you that," he explained, "It belongs to you. It will always be." 

Jon sucked in a sharp breath and understood what he needed to do.

"I know you don't stay too long in any place. Arya told me that. But I also know you care about Catrya. You make sure to make a home for her, wherever that might be at the time. Dragonstone can be that place. _I know it can._ "

She tried to decipher whether what she was hearing was hope or despair and found both in his reasoning.

Dany would be deluding herself if she said she didn't find the idea attractive – she wanted Dragonstone, for very specific reasons he didn't need to know yet.

"I would have to take some of my people there-" 

"Whatever you wish, I'll see to it that it is done," Jon didn't let her finish when he got up and finished climbing up the steps. He stayed there, watching her perhaps hoping that now that she had granted something, she could grant more but that she was not going to do. 

Dany turned her face to the window again.

"I did it," she said, all so sudden feeling protective of herself. "I built the new world," she told him.

Jon nodded. If there has ever been one thing he was sure of, it is the unstoppable force that she was.

"And you did it too," she added, looking at him with tired but knowing eyes.

"It's too early to say so. The way I see it, I'm just returning it to its old form."

"Some things can seem the same but never are again what they once were," she made a point, before climbing off the windowsill and facing him in the closest distance they've been in all these years since the last time that ended in her death. "Let me take her to the Revelry," she requested. 

Jon blinked his eyes, confused. "Excuse me, what's that?"

"A celebration we have every year in all Essos." 

"Celebration of what?"

"Just a celebration," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "For the things that are good, and living. We took her last year and she loved it. If I could share one last–"

"Dany, you are not going to lose her," he stated what he has already decided. "I won't do that. I want you to be part of her life."

Again, he saw her stiffen as her gaze hardened. It took a moment for Jon to realize the mistake he had made.

"I'm sorry, _Daenerys_ ," he said quietly. "Yes. You can take her."

Dany's hostility lessened. All day she had fought between resentment and understanding like waves hitting the shore. There were things stuck in her chest that she still wanted to question – things that probably didn't make sense to keep questioning – but ultimately, she chose to back off and allow whatever fate was holding to be brought out. 

"You can come as well," she told him, "Indeed, we all should meet in Pentos. Dragonstone is a little distance from there and from King's Landing." Her eyes traveled from the ground to his own. "I want you to see it."

"The new world? Or that you were right?"

She hated it the way he made her smile with that question but she granted it.

"I want you to see that maybe everything led to it," she admitted. And with that, she walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kinda the ending of the first part of this story. Now we'll delve more into Jon's storyline while we see moments of Dany life with Arya and Catrya. And there will be some book!characters and original characters coming so hold on to your seat.


	10. Contingency

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who would have thought that writing military scenes would be so difficult? Lol. In fact, I took the time to read Vegetius' book on military science and I am still trying to figure out how to approach this side of the story. If you want to drop some recommendations I would happily appreciate it.
> 
> Thank you in advance!

** "Contingency" **

** Lands Beyond The Wall - 310 After Aegon's Conquest **

Men garbed all in black traversed The Haunted Forest, only guided by the dusky daylight that peeked through the thick crowns of the tall trees. Even so, their sight was poor. None of them had ever been this far north. 

"What if we find one of those monsters? _The dead_ ," a young one asked to another much older who was walking wearily on the thick layers of snow.

He snorted before replaying, "Naught but wildlings haunt this bloody forest."

The young ranger blinked his little eyes and gazed around them. They deployed a great number this time. 

"I don't know. My mother used to tell me stories about ice spiders. And you know the dead _were_ real," he insisted.

"Fuck the spiders, the dead, and the wildlings. Fuck the Starks, the raven, and the dragons. I'm sick of all that shit about magical beings," the other snapped, raising his voice in protest. "What have they all done for us? Nothing but making us fight their bloody wars, over and over again. And what do we gain? Karstark is right. If Jon Snow could finish off the Dragon Queen, we can finish off the wolves."

The older man strode forward while his companion, younger and slimmer, quickened his steps to catch up with him with another question in mind.

"Finish her off? But the Dragon Queen is alive. Or so I heard."

The grumpy man spat to the side, gladly recalling when he had the opportunity to do so at the mad bitch face.

"Those witches from the east brought her back. Do you remember the red witch? The one at the battle against the dead? Her kind does all that sort of thing. The red god thing. An acquaintance of mine said that Jon Snow had been killed and brought back with the same magic. We are people of the Old Gods; to them we owe our roots and our way of life. When we're done with the Starks, the gods will favor us again."

The young man swallowed hard and nodded. His mother used to say that many invasions of foreigners for so long was what had plunged the North into such disgrace. _The Starks had failed to their roots and deserved to be uprooted_.

They stopped all of sudden when a cracking sound disrupted the quietness. The older man gestured for the other to stay still, in a defensive position. The wildlings were near extinction and it was their mission to carry out that goal. The first assault on Hardhome had been a success because they could have never expected it. And although their men stabbed Jon Snow to death, and threw him into the water to let it bleed out, rumors of a man with a white wolf leading the remaining wildlings had been sighted around these parts.

King Harrion Karstark was clear on his request: _kill the damned beast as well_.

_Mayhaps ice spiders_ , the lad guessed.

_A shout._

_No. A howl._

_The wolf_.

Their commander signaled them to move further northeast until they found themselves running up a slope. Their weaponry and preparation were clearly superior, and fighting alongside them had served to learn about their strengths and weaknesses. They also outnumbered them. Yet they knew better the battlefield. 

"Stop!" the commander ordered when they were reached a dead point. They were climbing too high. The commander stiffened as he looked to the sides. There was nothing in sight to indicate the beast's presence and it was a clear warning that they got to this point.

"It may be a trap," his older companion growled.

In the midst of the ghostly landscape, red eyes opened and then the form of the direwolf with a single ear became apparent. Another form appeared behind him, like a shadow. A small man in comparison, but whose presence made the soldiers freeze in place as they looked up at Jon Snow. The countenance of the former King in the North turned into an oathbreaker and a queenslayer was as dark as and grim as the forest itself where he took refuge. 

"He's insane," his partner sputtered once more. He was raising his sword slowly and surely. "For the North and the old gods," he said confidently, "Let's go for him and the beast."

However, the commander did not order the attack, rather sensing that it could be a trap. And he was not wrong. He ordered them to aim the crossbows at him, and the young man loose the bolt – but failed like the others.

Breaches started cracking. They looked down but nothing was happening. Then they realized that the sound was coming from the sky so they looked up and noticed that something was falling down on them.

* * *

"It feels like good ol’ times," Tormund said at his side as they heard only agonizing bawls coming from the fire that engulfed another group of crows. "Being haunted like animals by these fuckers."

Jon replied with his silence. His eyes were fixed on the bright fire burning. These days he had become a quieter man if that was possible.

After Hardhome he had been paralyzed in disbelief of what was happening around him. They had returned – _the crows_. The Night’s Watch. Men clad in black cloaks were hunting down the Freefolk. They had blamed him at first, and Jon knew it made sense considering that he supposedly was one of them. Plus, Sansa, his sister, was the Queen of the Northern kingdom. So how was such a hunt possible? He did not understand what was happening. 

With a solemn expression, he walked over to where one of those men squirmed, crawling as if to make some difference. He thought about what Tormund had said just a moment ago. Right now, the hunters looked like nothing more than a wounded deer that had to be slaughtered to end its tortuous agony. But unlike the animal, Jon had no sympathy for the young lad. He just wanted to end it all

His eyes went to the weapon the dying man was trying to reach. When his hand made the futile attempt to reach for the crossbow, Jon moved nimbly to lift it instead.

Lord Stark used to despise the use of crossbows in the Northern army, saying that they were of no use if the terrain was steep.

"M-Mercy, m’lord," the man sobbed. Jon realized that he couldn't be more than a boy fresh out of his mother's arms. "Mercy, we were just following his orders!"

"Whose orders?" Jon responded to his plea.

"King Harrion's," the young man replied.

_Harrion_. The name was familiar.

A Karstark.

_Weren't they all dead?_

"And Queen Sansa?"

The lad was on his back, barely turned to see him as he whimpered. When he asked the question, he sobbed even louder and hid his face.

_Sansa is dead_ , Jon concluded easily.

He nodded. His gaze on the crossbow. He aimed and did not miss it.

* * *

**Essos**

Dany walked quietly across the encampment, smiling stealthily at her soldiers when they've greeted her as she made her way to the tent of Olea, the old healer.

Once she stood outside, she opened the flaps and stepped forward with her heart pounding heavily. 

The treated patient in question was sitting on the cot, with his back to her. When the queen cleared her throat to announce her presence, he turned and got up in haste.

Alesseo was his name and he was one of the guards closest to her, as far as she could tell. Dany used to be nicer towards him. His hair was like the copper and his eyes like emeralds – he was unlike any other man she'd favored in the past. He was also young and therefore, naive and idealistic. Coming from a family of wealthy merchants, he had chosen to join the great army of the Dragon Queen because he believed in her cause. And so, he’d worked hard to earn his place on her guard.

Such affection had softened Dany's heart if she even had one yet. But sympathy was all she felt; she knew all too well what became of those passions.

"Y–your Grace," her young guard stuttered as he greeted her. Maybe it was the blood loss he had suffered.

"No need to resort to formalities, Alesseo. I came to see how you were doing after the incident."

Dany looked guiltily at his amended hand. Three-half fingers. That's what it had cost him to put himself between her and Arya Stark.

"I will survive," he replied, looking at his hand with equal concern in his eyes. These were somewhat swollen and Dany supposed it had been inevitable for him to shed a few tears for the loss. He didn't stop there and added, "I'm going to adapt...learn to swing my weapons with my other hand if necessary. But I'll continue to serve you where I can."

Dany sighed. In his devotion, she recalled Ser Jorah and that, far from making her happy, led her once more to that place of regret and sorrow.

"You could have died…" Dany began but he interrupted her.

"That is my duty, Your Grace. I will die for you if necessary."

"That's the point. Your dead would have been pointless. Arya Stark wasn't going to hurt me."

"Forgive me for going against you. But that woman is a danger and shouldn't even stand on the same ground as you."

It was little to say that Arya lost it the moment she found out what had happened to her older sister. At first, she had assumed that Daenerys had had something to do with it and had acted driven by this assumption. The only way to control her was by knocking her unconscious. Olea had been supplying her with milk of the poppy ever since.

"Tell me what can I do to honor you for your courage," Dany asked him, not wanting to dwell on Arya and continue to deepen her guilt.

Standing upright with an assertive and correct posture, he said, "Let me continue to serve you as your guard."

* * *

The gurgling of Sansa Stark's daughter greeted her when Dany walked into her tent. A Dothraki maid called Ornella, which she’d known since the days of burning Dothraki Khals in Vaes Dothrak, was taking care of her.

Though she couldn't help being curious about the infant, Dany tried to keep her distance. She was too much of a reminder of her stubborn and treacherous mother that made Dany's skin burn with seething rage. But there was also in her an unfamiliar air that helped cool down that irk she felt.

_She had probably inherited something from her late father as well_. _Whoever that was_.

"How is the girl?" Dany asked in the tongue of the Dothraki.

"She is fine, Khaleesi. She is much easier to deal with than that mad woman who is her kin," Ornella answered.

Dany nodded and walked past them. She lay down on her palette and began rubbing her throbbing temple as she wondered again what she was doing putting so much at risk for the Starks. It hadn't ended well for her the first time – a second time would make no difference. 

Ornella walked over with the baby and Dany startled.

"What do you do?" she asked her, somewhat upset.

Ornella looked at her in confusion.

"I thought you would want to hold her, Khaleesi," she replied.

"No," Dany stated, jerking to her feet and striding in another direction. "I already held her too long on the fly here. This girl is nothing to me, and as soon as I make sure her aunt is in her right mind, she will leave and I will never see her again."

That was her plan. That was the reason why that man – Lord Howland Reed – had entrusted her to deliver this child to her aunt. Actually, Lord Reed had mentioned another person first, one that Daenerys was unwilling to see again even for the sake of this babe.

Ornella stared at her in shock. She tipped her chin to her chest in assent and turned to keep rocking the babe in her arms. 

Dany fleetingly captured the blue eyes that looked at her as if wondering who she was.

* * *

"After the storm, a calm comes. But in the aftermath, the chaos it brings linger for a while," Olea intoned an old folk saying. It had been about three days since her decompensation, and just now the old healer was withdrawing the use of milk of the poppy. "Right now, she's there, awoken, trying to put the pieces together.,"

Dany went inside the tent and found Arya lying on the cot, rolled up with half her body covered in fur. When she became aware of her presence, Jon Snow's favorite sister only glanced at her.

"I should have taken your boat," she said.

"Might you as well would have ended up being killed."

"I was trained by faceless men."

And she had killed a legendary creature, which was believed impossible to defeat. And yet she had left her own kin unprotected.

Dany sat in a tree stump chair.

"There is something more powerful than any training and I think you and I know it very well," she said, before letting out a held breath. " _Vengeance_."

Arya sat bolt upright.

"You sat there with him – listening to him and you didn't do anything about it?" she spouted. Her strength was fragile and every movement she made was wobbly and weak.

Dany lifted her chin and her brow furrowed.

"Make no mistake," Dany warned her, "I owe no grace to your family."

"You said you didn't want to hurt Jon!" Arya cried. "That you would do anything for him!"

"I’ve done already too much for him and now I mire in the consequences of it.”

Arya didn't want to argue anymore because she was right. Deep down she realized how ungrateful and stoic she was being. The confusion stirred by pain and anguish did not allow her to see through those feelings.

"I should never have left Winterfell. I should have stayed," she wailed, giving in to the weakness brought on by medicine and her own suffering.

"Regretting what happened isn't going to change anything," Daenerys told her, serene. "I speak from experience."

Her apparent calm brought out her pent-up fury again.

"And Jon? Why didn't you go get him? You left him there to his own devices!"

Daenerys felt a flutter in her stomach as she let out a mocking huff.

"I saved Jon from death _twice_. The first cost me a child, the second a loyal friend. Not long before, he killed me." And as if saying it out loud had lightened the load off her shoulders, Dany stood up. "I'm sorry but even if I am unable to cause any harm to him, I hold a tether. Coming back to save him one more time after he’d repeatedly wronged me would be like loosening my grip again. I’m not doing that. I can't do that nevermore." Both women's eyes locked on each other's. "Besides," Dany continued, "Jon cannot be killed. He cannot die. He's stuck in this existence as much as I am. Will of the red god."

"You told Karstark..."

"I told Karstark what I know is going to happen if something bad happens to Jon."

Arya understood.

"Burn it all,: she whispered first. "Burn them all!" she claimed, with the fury of her soul overflowing her eyes with tears. "Go take Westeros. Add it to the collection of kingdoms you hold so dear. I don't know. Do something!"

"I remind you," Dany cut her off with her queenly voice, that one that had the power to mute a whole room, "That your other brother is still the king of the rest of Westeros."

Arya froze, blinking and narrowing her eyes.

"Bran–he's not…" she began but stuttered midway. "I'm not asking you to hurt him. But he's not a good king."

_And what is a good king for you?_ Daenerys bit her tongue when she thought of asking her.

  
"You still allowed it to happen. You all did," she simply reminded her. "You saved me. Once. This alliance works because we are in constant balance. When I found out what happened with your sister it was too late to save her. Not that I had done anything about it." She walked a few steps until she was at the foot of the palette. "I owe you nothing. I owe Jon nothing. I owed Sansa nothing." Her face twisted into an involuntary smile, which was more of a gesture of weariness and surrender. "And yet I went to that swamp, took the girl and brought her back _safely_." She shook her head from side to side, incredulous of her own actions as she looked at Arya and saw in her all that she had lost. "Because of you, the Stark, my family is gone. Twice you contribute to our ruin. Because of me, you the _bloody_ Starks, have another chance of survival."

Dany turned on her heel and headed out, exhausted from emotional turmoil. Arya's voice halted her walkout.

"I see why you couldn't get on well. You and my sister," she said, bitterly. "Both of you were too arrogant to realize that actually, you were quite similar."

* * *

Arya stumbled out of the old healer's tent and trudged through the camp. It was dusk, and in the distance, the mountains looked like shadows as the light died behind them. No longer her attrition had something to do with the milk of the poppy

She had reflected on how to proceed now and only one thing occupied her mind. _Vengeance_. Harrion Karstark was a new name on her list, and she would recite it every night before sleeping.

When she entered Daenerys' tent, one of her Dothraki maid gave a little cry. The guards she had faced not long before were quickly prodded in. Arya raised her hands and showed them that she was not armed and was coming in peace.

"I've come to see the girl," she said, one of her fingers pointed at the palette where the child was resting. 

Daenerys had to show up before she was finally allowed to get close to her niece. Arya rolled her eyes but didn't protest at the treatment she received after the havoc she wrecked before.

Her heart broke a little more when she saw her. She was sound asleep, oblivion of the world’s cruelty and the damage that already befell her.

_We are the last of the Starks_ , she recalled.

"Can I hold her?" she asked in a plea. She didn't know why but she felt that at that moment it was what she had to do.

"Not yet," Daenerys's stoic voice answered. "Not when you're still weak. Besides, she's sleeping." As if the expression on Arya's face had softened her determination, Daenerys added, looking towards the infant, "Catrya is her name."

Arya nodded, sniffing while tears wet her cheeks.

"My mother's name and mine combined. I imagine Sansa wanted it to be a unique name, the first princess in the North after centuries." 

Daenerys blinked, avoiding the sight of the babe. Arya walked closer to the palette as Daenerys waved away Ornella and the guards.

"When we were children," Arya continued, "Sansa was like a princess. She was the one who enjoyed the septa's lessons and wanted to become queen one day. You wouldn't have recognized her back then. She was totally another person than the one you met." 

Daenerys puffed out her chest with a breath of air. She could not say that she did not understand her if after all she herself still kept some good memory of the times when Viserys considered her his sister and not his way to the iron throne.

"You were a princess, too. You would have gotten along," _back then_ , Arya meant.

"I was a princess only in my brother's mind. To the world, I was no better than a dog." She cocked her head, considering it better. "Well, not exactly. Even a dog stirred more sympathy in people."

Arya whipped her head at her.

"I thought..."

"Jon thought the same thing. That I had been raised as a princess." It may have been the stream of rage that reminded her of that, but she found herself involuntarily bringing him back into the conversation. "I still remember him, talking to me like I was a little girl playing with my dolls, while he tried to make me see reason," she recalled with some bitterness.

"How did you fall in love with my brother if you got along so badly?"

It was more of a protest and Arya realized immediately that she shouldn't have asked that question.

Daenerys swallowed hard at the lump in her throat but answered calmly. "I don't feel comfortable discussing that with you–"

"You're right. I overstepped. You know I'm not going to sit idly by. I have to go back. Kill Karstark. Make sure Jon is safe."

"I'm not going to stop you."

"Not helping me either."

"And what about your niece then? I remind you that I am who, until a while ago, you considered the most dangerous person in the world."

_Gods_. _How long had it been?_ Arya wondered, suddenly disoriented and throwing herself to the ground. She glared at Daenerys.

"Do you ever think about the people you killed that day?" she asked her. "Because I do. I saw it all that day. I was down there. I saw women, children, the old. A pregnant woman who lost both legs, bleeding on the floor!” She was sobbing now. "A girl and her mother...they were just trying to save themselves and you ran over with your dragon. You deserved to die! Jon did the right thing!"

Daenerys felt hurt by every word yet she quailed not. She understood Arya was grieving. Furthermore, she could see the truth through her statement – she would never, no matter how hard she tried, she’ll never amend her greatest crime.

"And what do you think I have gained?" Daenerys spoke finally. “You know something, Arya? Death is not as horrible as it is painted. It's just darkness and numbness. Almost a relief,” she revealed.

When drew near, Arya believed for a moment that that would be it. That her patience had come to an end. However, she did not stop looking into her eyes.

"Sansa, Jon, you and your father. You all thought yourselves better for having a good intention but you know what, Arya? Your father didn't care that my brother and I were hunted like animals while he endorsed the reign of his best friend. Your sister did not mind sacrificing your brother's secret to get herself a crown. Jon did not care that I was also his family as well. And your desire for retribution does not let you see what is important right now," she said before glancing at where the babe was sleeping. She looked at Arya again.

Another wave of despondency washed over Arya as she was reduced to a monk of nerves and insults. She didn't know why she had suddenly taken it out on the Dragon Queen when all this had nothing to do with her. Perhaps it was the fact that she could trace the point where things had started to go wrong to the point where things did not go well between her and her family. Or was destiny so capricious? Maybe if...She thought, Maybe if she had interceded and dealt with Cersei before Cersei had murdered Daenerys' friend. If only I had trusted Jon and distrusted Sansa more. And Bran? How is it that someone who claimed to know everything could not do anything about this?

The realization fell upon her like the ruins of King's Landing that day.

"Please, take me to Jon," Arya leaped at Daenerys, pleading.

"You are free to go as you want. To do with your niece what you want. But I don't plan to ever see Jon again," Daenerys clarified. Sure of her words, or so she wanted to believe. 

"What if you have a chance to save him and are you wasting it?" Arya tried to make her see reason. It seemed to work for a moment where she saw her falter as she looked at the ground. "Daenerys..."

Daenerys licked her lips before answering. "I will send an envoy to look for him and bring him to Braavos."

"It's not fast enough! Not when there are other means."

Daenerys's breath hitched. Doubts began to overwhelm her and that same feeling that with the years after her death she had tried to attenuate returned. _Guilt_. She didn't want to be guilty of letting something bad happening to him. She couldn't live with it.

_And yet..._

"What hurts the most is knowing that it is this very feeling, this feeling of helplessness that he drew upon to kill me. Because he knew it. He knew that I was going to receive him in my arms again and again despite everything."

Arya winced. There was again that vacant expression on Daenerys she wore every time she remembered her misadventure with her brother.

"When he found out that we were relations," she confessed to her, "He drew from me, physically and emotionally. Yet I tried to reach him more than once and all those times, he pushed me away until there was a last and it was fatal." She shook her head, side to side. "I'm afraid I'm not ready...ready to face him and say that I don't feel that when I am around him anymore. That I'm not going to succumb at the mere sight of him. I'm sorry for him, for you, for Catrya but I have to think for myself this time because there no one else in this world that could protect me but myself." 

Arya's eyes fell. She wanted to keep insisting, shake her to reason, but after that statement, she'd lost all drive to keep fighting for a lost cause.

"If you leave Catrya, I swear to you that I shall do my best to keep her healthy and happy. But I am not her family, and I will never be able to fill the void left."

Daenerys glanced briefly at Catrya and then Arya before calling for a guard to keep an eye on her and leaving. 

Arya settled back in Daenerys' palette and closed her eyes to snuggle into herself and finish venting the sorrows that overwhelmed her while thinking of her family. Again she felt a girl of barely one and ten, thrown in the mud while making a list in her mind with the names of her enemies.

_Harrion Karstark_.

_Harrion Karstark_.

_Harrion Karstark_.

* * *

She had returned from a visit to a well-known merchant in Lorath. The camp had begun to transform into a small village that locals used to visit to offer goods and services. Dany was on the hill where Drogon landed, watching them as she considered the possibility of building a small garrison that could cater to the needs of the surrounding towns when suddenly a guard alerted her that several days ago Arya Stark had departed.

Her heart wrung but she didn't want to give way to regret. Before leaving, Jon's headstrong young sister agreed to take the gold she had offered her. However, Dany feared for the baby. She had no doubt that Arya was a strong woman who could stand up to whatever adversary stood in her way. But the baby...she felt a wave of guilt.

Daenerys was about to climb Drogon and fly towards the direction Arya had gone when she saw Ornella pacing near her tent, carrying Catrya in her arms.

Arya had left, leaving her niece behind with her.


	11. Reasons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you in advance.

** "Reasons" **

**Braavos – 316 After Aegon's Conquest**.

A lone black banner flapped in the breeze from a flagpole, above the city of Braavos' own. In it, the image of a red dragon with one single head filled Jon with a wretched feeling all again. Three days had followed his arrival to the city and all that transpired since then.

His reunion with Dany and the blighted encounter with his niece have left him feeling powerless and uncertain about the future from this point. Unlike his battles in Westeros, here Jon hadn't had a careful plan laid out that he could follow in order not to be defeated. 

He'd gotten engaged in a heated discussion with Arya just some moments before he'd taken his leave of her. His little sister has been enraged by his poor attempt to make amends by extending what in simple judgment was a marriage proposal. 

"I've always considered you too green for your own good but these are the actions of an apologetic child, not a man's, and much less a King's," she'd berated him. "What sheer folly to even consider that the person you killed might accept your marriage proposal, brother!"

Jon had argued that he didn't intend to propose the marriage alliance but to retrieve what he'd taken from her. 

"The last time we saw each other, I took her life and everything else that was hers. Before that, I've taken so much more. _We all did_.”

"Had she felt like she lost something, she would have returned to take it," Arya crossed him.

Jon sucked in a deep breath before leaving, not knowing what else he could tell. Hearing such truth spelled out from another's voice felt awfully raw for him, and it was all of it too real – nothing he could do to amend things with Dany, nothing he could give to compensate the damage and undo the hurt.

Leaning on the balustrade of the balcony in the guests’ chambers, Jon lost himself in his brooding whilst his eyes set on the lonely dragon dancing along with the wind.

_I wonder if he ever feels alone up there_.

"It was too painful for her," Arya's voice startled him, making him turned around abruptly. She was standing beneath the archway of the entrance. Eyes fixed on the same view. "To see the three dragons on her house banner when two of her three children were gone."

Suddenly the absence of the other two heads held a whole new significance.

"You seem to hold a remarkable awareness of her feelings," he remarked, a little bit resented. 

"Well, I've lived with her for the past five years or so," she rebutted as she slowly approached him. "Not enough time to know her entirely, I'm afraid."

"Five years?" Jon asked her, bewildered. "Where were you before that?"

Guilt and regret tore through her and cut like stab wounds in the belly.

"I left," she confessed. "When Catrya was a babe and I found out about our sister's death...I left to return to Westeros."

"But you didn't."

"Where I went...I had to stay in order to pay an old debt."

Arya couldn't confide more without exposing him to a reality that she preferred to keep in the shadows. A time in her life that she preferred to leave behind.

Jon wouldn't insist anyway, understanding that his sister didn't want to delve further into it. What was clear was that Daenerys had been more than just a benefactor in raising Catrya. It was that thought that lingered in his mind.

"And she never told you why?"

"Tell me what?"

"Why not go back and burn us all."

Arya had asked herself the same question back in the time, and when the assumptions had not been enough to clear the uncertainty, she had questioned it to Daenerys herself.

"Pain makes people behave erratically and in Daenerys' case, it turned her into a monster," Arya answered. Yet around her, there was malice and jostling to throw her off the cliff. She herself acknowledged having been part of it, not by acting but by not doing enough when she could. "You were right," she admitted, "When you said we should've trusted her. We should have trusted her, and I should have trusted you more." 

Jon nodded and looked away.

"She burned the city," he recalled. He could still smell and taste burned human flesh; see the scorched remains of the thousands upon thousands of people who were razed to the ground with dragon fire. Remembering that also made him go back to the events that followed it, the swift drawing of the dagger hooked on his belt and the agile and fleeting movement with which he thrust it into Dany as if he had thought and done it at the same time, leaving the hesitation and regret for later years. "She burned the city," he repeated, absentmindedly. 

"I've seen her doubt herself countless times in order to never commit such an atrocity again." She squinted at him. "In the end, _she died_."

He shut his eyes, regretfully. Jon turned to her. He swallowed the lump on his throat and went to sit on the terrace bench, in a bent down position, with his elbows resting on his knees.

"I want to give her home back."

"And what is that? What is home according to you?"

He hesitated first. "Dragonstone, it seems."

"You are an irredeemable northern fool!" Arya complained, coming to sit next to him and mimicking his position. "We ought to make the right decision for Catrya's sake. It'll be not easy for her to change the life she'd ever known for the prospect of something unknown." 

"We won't be able to take her back to Westeros without hurting her," Jon responded.

He avoided her gaze and said nothing more. His hands opened and closed in a nervous gesture that she did not miss.

“She’s all I have,” Jon spoke after long minutes.

"Who?"

"Catrya," he said, turning his face at her. "She might be my heir as well."

She scoffed. "You can’t speak seriously."

He clicked his tongue. "She's my closest relative. At least the one relevant to Westeros."

"That is not how kings make heirs," she reminded him.

He got up and took a few steps before turning around. "She's just a child. If she comes back now, then this will all just be naught but a memory. She's of the North, she was born in Westeros."

Arya got up too and walked over to him, facing him. "What you mean is that she won't be seen as a foreign whore like Daenerys was seen? Fuck Westeros. My niece doesn't have to prove anything to anyone. She was taken from her mother's womb! Hunted to die before she was born!"

"And look what it did to Dany!" Jon snapped; his voice hoarse. He blinked and looked down at the ground as if he wanted to avoid shedding tears. "I can do this well for both of them, if only..."

"Jon," Arya cut him off, sternly. "It doesn't work like that. You can't fix this. Not this way."

His mouth twisted as if he loathed the notion of what she was saying to him. "Then what am I supposed to do? Nothing like I did before?"

Arya shrugged. "You will do as best as you can."

* * *

Dany drew a breath and let out as her shoulders slumped. She raised her fist and knocked on the door twice. Slowly, the knob turned and the door opened but no one was there to greet her. She made her way in, seeing that the girl's small form was heading back to tumble down on the floor next to her rag dolls.

"Can I come in, princess?" she asked for her permission. Dany did not move past the entrance.

Catrya shrugged. "Do not call me that – I'm not a princess no more," she replied, surly humor like her kin these days, with pursed lips that quivered at the slightest provocation as her blue eyes became teary.

" _Anymore_ ," Dany corrected her, stepping inside completely.

When she stepped forward, the girl put down the doll in her hand and looked at her with wide-open eyes as if she had seen a ghost. 

"Is my uncle still out there? Will he take me to Winterfell now?" she asked, aghast by the notion of being taken away all of a sudden. 

Daenerys’ heart sank. 

"No one is going to take you anywhere," she promised. She came to sit on the floor next to her. As soon as Dany lay down, the girl settled between her legs, her back against her chest.

"Why can't you come with us?" Catrya turned around and asked at Dany’s face. The insistence on her expression threw Dany back into the past, where a face alike to hers insisted on her departure instead.

Dany rubbed her forehead.

"Queen Dany," Catrya called and press on, "I don't want to go back alone! Don't make me go!"

Dany took a hand and soothe her cheek. She had known from the moment she allowed herself to become fond of someone else’s child that a day like this would come. However, it was not her own sorrows that mattered now but the distress that the girl felt in the face of something unknown being imposed on her.

"Do you want to hear a story?" Dany asked her as an old memory arose. "There in the North they say, beneath Winterfell lies a sleeping dragon and that is why its walls are warm even in the midst of winter."

"Who told you that?" Catrya’s interest suddenly picked up.

Dany flicked a lock of red hair behind the child’s ear as her heart pounded into her chest.

"Your uncle," she confessed, and her mind traced distant memories in which she, like an enthralled child, has listened to the folktales of his beloved land, trying to make hers that love of his.

"Where is Aunt Arya?" Catrya asked.

Dany blinked repeatedly, dispelling the haze of her mind.

"I think she's with him," she replied. "He felt very sad after you left."

"I didn't want to make him feel sad," she apologized. The blue of her eyes reflected a mixture of sincere concern and contrition. 

"I know, my love, I know," Dany reassured her, holding her small form close and tight. 

* * *

They were in her audience chamber, reading and writing reports on petty and minor affairs when Daenerys let Daario know of her plans in Pentos.

"The Rhaegal and The Viserion will ship King Jon and his retinue," she informed him.

Daario's objection did not wait.

"Isn't that a bit too much?"

"On the contrary," she said more calmly, raising her dull gaze and meeting his dismayed expression. She stopped what she was doing. "It will also take Catrya and Arya, and us," she reminded him.

"You are bothering a great deal with a person who has betrayed and murdered you."

Daenerys tilted her head and glared at him.

"You have also betrayed me, and look at you, here believing yourself entitled to lend advice."

Instead of taking it as a warning, Daario kept berating her.

"You are being too forgiving," he complained.

"You tell it like it's something wrong."

"It is if the intention of your so-called allies is nothing more than to use you as they have done before," Daario added.

Daenerys crossed her legs under the table and stuck her chest out in a stance of contemplation.

"Nothing I have given has been demanded of me. I have done it all on my own accord."

But Daario didn't give her a rest.

"Sometimes it's not about demanding something from someone, but about accepting what comes from a place of remorse," he spoke with wise words. Too much for a simple sellsword. "Why are you bothering yourself with Westeros? You have done no half the damage that others have done before – those who are recalled as heroes and champions."

"I am no hero nor champion."

"Are you not?" he asked almost bewildered. 

"No." Her eyes fell on the ground. "I died."

* * *

"I brought you this so you will stop being sad. I didn't mean to act cruelly. Could you forgive me, Uncle Jon?"

If Jon remained quiet at first it was because he had been taken aback and was flabbergasted. Catrya's words sounded as if she had committed a crime and not act like any other child would under similar circumstances. 

Catrya had looked for him when they were breaking fast, bringing with her a small red-orange flower that looked like a poppy.

"Uncle Jon?" his niece called him out.

"I-of course. I mean, not. You don't need to apologize at all," he answered as he grabbed the gift she delivered and took in its scent. His eyes stilled on the flower for a moment as a thought crossed his mind. "I know you love Queen Dany. I promise you I will always do my best for you two to be happy and close. But–" 

_Everything before the word but is horse shit_ , Jon recalled briefly.

"–she's still a queen and her people need her help, here," he looked up at her and found her staring back at him. "And Westeros is our home, is it?"

Catrya didn't seem convinced. She knew all too well as himself that what he conveyed was horse shit. There was no tangible solution for their conundrum. Even if Daenerys accepted Dragonstone back, how long she would stay there if she did so not as a queen consort but as another of his vassals? Was Daenerys really going to be just a vassal? She was queen in her own right, and according to Arya's recounting and the words of Dany herself, she had no true home anywhere. She didn't stay long anywhere never. It was an impossible situation. 

_"Then make it possible,"_ another voice from the past sounded in his mind. _"If not for mending your mistake, do it for yourself. Because it's something you want more than anything in this world."_

"Catrya, we still have the Revelry," he heard Arya saying, trying to cheer her mood up. It seemed to work as Catrya whipped her face at him with a broad smile. 

"Are you coming?" she asked him.

"I said Daenerys that we will but I'm not quite sure what it is about–"

"I'll tell him!" Catrya said before someone else could have the honor. 

* * *

The next time Jon would see Daenerys, he was standing in the middle of the walkway leading to the port, observing the ship that was offered for him and his retinue to the journey to Pentos. She was on the deck of said vessel, talking to someone who seemed to be another of her guards that was not Daario Naharis. She was clad again in vibrant colors that were not those muted gray tones with which he'd gotten used to remembering her.

This time she was wearing a green gown.

Jon had found the lost heads of the dragon on the prow of two royal ships moored and waiting to be boarded for the voyage to Pentos. He was still somewhat stunned by this offer. He took it as a gesture of goodwill and according to Ser Davos, the vessels were the most beautiful he had ever seen.

The Rhaegal and The Viserion.

Jon was overwhelmed by the memory of these creatures, who had both lost their lives after fighting the dead in circumstances that only served to further undermine their mother. He had had an initial bond with the green beast, something so tender and unexpected that didn't even leave a trace when it was gone all too sudden.

"The Rhaegal and The Viserion," Ser Davos commented at his side, forcing him out of his thoughts. "Ships with dragon names."

Arya was also with them. 

"Isn't there a Drogon?" Jon asked her.

"Yes, but it is a dragon," the answer came from another source.

The three of them turned around to find Daario Naharis and his men standing near them, almost like stalking them. 

"Is the Westerosi crew worthy of manning this ship?" Daario threw another question, mostly for Ser Davos to respond.

Jon glanced at his Hand.

"We are diligent people, yes," Davos reassured. 

Daario stared at Jon then. He was wearing something like a cocky smirk on his face. 

"Is the Queen coming with us?" Jon questioned him. 

"Why do you want to know? Are you going to show her your another dagg–?" 

"You speak from a place too high to have sold Meereen to the slavers when the queen was not even halfway to Volantis," Arya cut him off.

Jon turned around with an arched eyebrow at Arya. She had a defiant expression on her face. When he turned back to see at Daario Naharis' face, though just as impassive, he was now crossed by a shadow of remorse.

"What a hearty team of people we are, then. The traitors of the queen," he said with blissful humor that unmatched his very unwelcome nature. 

Jon could see through the relief that passed through him that it was not a good thing. It meant that at the end of the day Dany had lost each and every one of her allies to death or betrayal.

The other men who accompanied Daario continued down the steps to the port silently. Jon, with a nod, dismissed Ser Davos and Arya. With they were left alone, the two men met their gaze with implicit accusation.

"What is the punishment in Westeros for treason under your reign, being a traitor yourself?" he asked.

Jon blinked. While he didn't expect it to be subtle, there was real curiosity in his question.

"That will depend on how repentant the traitor is," he answered. 

"What would be the punishment for two men like us?"

Jon didn't hesitate for a moment.

"Death would be too merciful."

Daario scoffed and walked off. 

* * *

Dany's eyes were settled on the coastline. Alesseo was talking to her in the background but her mind had long drifted off. 

"I'm going to speed up the shift change - bring in more guards."

She turned around slowly at that last bit. He was expressionless. 

"I do not think it's necessary," she said.

"No precaution is excessive in these circumstances."

_These circumstances_ he said but Jon Snow he meant. 

"If you believe King Jon's transgression is true, then you ought to reckon mine as well," Daenerys invited him to acknowledge. Her people here were less keen to do that, having witnessed an angle of her that the Westerosi could never. 

"What I believe doesn't matter."

"It does matter for me," she said quietly before swiveling around. It was one thing to receive the scorn of Westeros - after that experience, she hadn't expected anything different. And from her many enemies in Essos, it was the same. But something about exposing herself as the monster she really was in front of people who had faith in her, it was as if Missandei, Ser Jorah, or Ser Barristan were still alive to see what she had become. 

They sailed from Braavos that same day. She did not let Catrya know that it might be the last time she'd visit the city because the same would entail addressing the sensitive issue of her eventual return to Westeros. The maids who were fond of her said goodbye amid sobs and solemn faces that Daenerys required them to keep guarded.

"Do you like my dress?" Catrya asked holding on to her hand as they walked down the dock. "It looks like yours."

"Did you choose it yourself?"

She nodded.

"I was going to wear a red one but I saw you were wearing a green one, Queen Dany."

Her heart swelled.

"Yeah, I really like it," Dany said.

After helping her settle into her cabin and making sure she had her supper, Dany urged her to go to bed before heading off to her own cabin. However, she drifted onto the deck.

* * *

"You've never taken a boat before," Arya observed as she made her way toward Daenerys, who was watching a game of gambling between the sailors and the guards taking place at the main deck. To both their surprise, among them were Ser Davos, Jon, and Daario.

Inadvertently, her eyes had landed on him. Images in her mind surged like a wave that hit her back to the bottom while she had tried to stay afloat. Even with the years that had passed, the thought of him still affected her greatly. Although a part of Dany told herself she was doing this journey for Catrya, she had to admit that wasn't entirely true. There was in her certain curiosity, a need to be around Jon at least for a while before a true farewell. Being around him had not been as uncomfortable as she had hoped or even wanted. She again was craving for his presence.

"The circumstance has never arisen before," she replied, glancing at Arya and then back at the men engaged in chaotic conversation. Jon and Daario even exchanged words from time to time, not noticing that she was looking at them from above.

"There has to be a way," Arya spoke in exasperation. She could see that there was still obvious interest in both parts. "It doesn't have to be marriage," she suggested although she didn't have in mind what exactly an alternative might be.

Daenerys looked up with a frown.

"You will not speak on his behalf, nor will I bring this matter up with you."

Then she walked back in the direction of the aftcastle and stood there, leaning on the railing and looking intently at the trace in the water left by the ship.

"How stubborn you are!" Arya complained. 

"Look who's talking," Daenerys scoffed.

"You accepted Dragonstone back."

"I did."

"Why?"

Daenerys sighed.

"It is the last vestige of my family."

"Wouldn't that be you and Jon?"

Daenerys laughed softly.

"I have spent my life reversing the mistakes of my family and even committing transgressions myself for which I am still trying to atone. I am in disgrace with my family," she said and looked back to where it came the bustle of male voices. "And he," she said, regarding thoughtfully, "He is a Stark."

"You are being unfair. When he sits on the throne of Westeros, he will do so as Jon of the houses Targaryen and Stark. He doesn't have to choose."

Daenerys could only respond with a quiet voice, "He already chose."

* * *

It didn't take Jon long to realize – and admit to himself – how drawn to her he still is, for his eyes would always stay too long on her as if he wanted to engrave in his memory all of her, as the latent fear crept in his mind, that the time ahead wouldn't be enough for them again.

He had come to snatch moments during the journey. She was still the regal and imposing figure that was easy to admire, spending lots of time engaged in discussions with Daario or any other person that holds her attention at the moment, but rather than substantial conversation these did not arouse much emotion in her. Truth be told, the only time the queen's front fell was when she was with Catrya, and her smiles were warm and her posture didn’t stiffen.

He also noticed there was another man – another of her guards – with whom she also spent a great quantity of time. A not very pleasant feeling course through him then, and it prompted him to look for her and prove if she also had would act the same with him.

"The last time we were on a boat–" he began, climbing the steps to the aft deck, where she would spend the afternoons watching the sunset.

Dany raised her arms to lean on the handrails as she looked up to him but didn't seem surprised by his sudden appearance.

"Don't you even dare to mention that," she interrupted him, regarding him sternly.

It was not his intention to come to that. Without lingering too long in regret, he rephrased his words.

"I was going to say that the last time we were together on a boat, we were on our way to an impossible battle. The odds were against us. How many years later? And we are going to a celebration," he said and also leaned on the railings, at a respectful distance from her. Neither her guards nor his guards were loitering nearby.

Daenerys scowled at him but agreed.

"In hindsight, then it all makes sense. The boat, Winterfell, the truth of your name, and some of the things that happened afterward – it was as if things were happening around us and we couldn't help it. We react. We didn't think things through before acting."

"Some decisions _were_ thought through," he added with certainty, glancing at her to check that she’d understood what he was implying.

"Maybe," she conceded. "But not everything. King's Landing, for instance. Not even in the last moments."

Jon froze in astonishment. He didn't think she was going to bring up that topic any more than they had discussed on the day they met again.

"I woke up that morning, dressed in the colors of my house, had my hair braided like never before because I knew I’d be victorious by the end of that day. _That_ before my soldiers had walked in with the not-so-surprising news that Tyrion had released his brother, and that Ser Davos was helping him get them out of the city, safe."

Jon was stunned. He looked back as if he wanted to search for Davos to confirm if what he was hearing was true.

"In my mind, it was crystal clear," Daenerys continued despite his sudden confusion, "I was going to take the throne and I would never again heed the advice of those who had so gratuitously defected me."

Daenerys had vacant eyes. She shook her head and her shoulders slumped. 

"It didn't even cross my mind there that I was going to do it, that I was going to burn down the city."

Her words were overwhelming and for a moment Jon didn't know what the right answer should be. He wanted to tell her that he hated that all of this had happened, that she didn't deserve to be betrayed and driven to madness. But by what right would he say such a thing?

"Was it the bells?" Then he asked, gulping the lump in his throat. "I mean, Tyrion said the bells would mean unconditional surrender, but Cersei would never surrender, nor were you going to accept it." He took a deep breath. "But Dany, you went straight to the people on the streets, not for Cersei."

"They weren't people anymore. Not to me. They were just...insects, so small and insignificant from Drogon's back."

The heavy sound of the creaking wood of the ship and the movements of the sea itself filled the silences between her words.

"They had taken everything from me," she said, her voice hard and hoarse. "My weakness was exposed. My mercy made me weak."

"That's not true," he tried to argue but to no avail. He could no longer deny it himself. Every time they had advised her on a merciful path, she had heard them and lost for it.

"If I had taken King's Landing when I arrived in Dragonstone, we probably would have united the entire Realm in the fight against the dead. I would have spared the lives of the Unsullied and the Dothraki. Instead, I gave it all for Westeros and they all showed me that to change would only receive rejection, fear, and betrayal." She laughed bitterly. "And I was not wrong."

Then Daenerys turned to go.

"And what changed?" He hurried on to stop her from leaving. 

"What changed?" she asked stunned.

"You did not return to Westeros. You did not conquer the entire world with fire and blood as you promised in front of your armies."

She lifted her chin.

"Your dagger in my heart," she answered harshly, sending a shiver through his body. "The divine will of this being that has brought me from my eternal rest back to this chaotic world. I don't know. Throughout my life up to that moment, everything I did, everything I fought for, had been for a good reason. I wanted to change the world. Even when I made terrible decisions there always seemed to be a reason that justified it. And after King's Landing," She blinked and looked him straight in the eye, "There was just no reason at all."

It was hypocritical how much he could understand her now and how different it would have been to hear these words that day. Daenerys was so hurt and he had failed to see it even in the last moment. Now she seemed to be just an empty shell of the woman she used to be when they first met.

"And now?" Jon insisted. "What reasons you have now?"

"I try to sleep at night."

With that, she tried again to withdraw but he stopped her with another question.

"Why did you send Jon Connington to me?"

The mention of the old knight moved her. She never had forgotten about him and their brief encounter. 

"He told me that even when you told him the truth about me, he still offered to serve you and you sent him to Westeros to find me."

Her serious eyes didn't match the nonchalance in her voice.

"I don't know why it had taken me so long before, but I finally made the decision to put the legacy of House Targaryen first," she replied.  
"Or maybe, I just don't want you dead. If that's the answer you're looking for."

"Why not?"

There she seemed to bite her tongue as if she would have been about to say something wrong. She lowered his chin and took a deep breath.

"I've already committed too many atrocities. I don't want to add kinslaying to that."

"And Daario Naharis?"

Daenerys raised an eyebrow.

"What about Daario?"

"You also forgave him."

She scoffed and looked away. She neither tensed nor act defensive, which for him attested to the superficiality of her relationship with her mean guard.

"Daario is to whom I look at to remind myself that sometimes to survive you have to be a bit of a cunt."

And saying this last, Daenerys walked off, leaving him in a state of surprise at hearing her mouth a vulgarity for the first time. He then laughed.


	12. Broken Things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, this has taken an eternity. Thanks in advance for your patience. The next chapter will be up in a few hours. (Yes, while I was struggling with this chapter I had time to write out a chapter ahead of time).

** "Broken Things" **

** Pentos, Essos. **

A short flight succeeded in unwinding Catrya's restlessness and by the time they landed on the terrace of one of the towers of the manse, she lied asleep on Dany's chest. Drogon had approached his snout to sniff at her scent only to puff in annoyance when he couldn't recognize any dragon blood in her.

"She’s no dragon. She is a wolf," Dany joked as she giggled at her child's reaction and stroked the girl's bloom of crimson hair. Catrya shifted with a soft whimper and her small fist closed on one of Daenerys’ locks. “Hush hush,” Dany quietly eased her as she shuffled toward the bench. She flopped on and spread on a reclined position. A whiff of vanilla and lavender reached her nostrils and she closed her eyes, sighing heavily.

_A wolf she may be, but she greatly favors the skies._

Some moons have turned since Arya walked away from her responsibility to her niece in the pursuit to sate that thirst for vengeance of hers. Only the gods could know what would be of her. In all that time, Daenerys had kept her word and provided Catrya with the best care an exiled princess could require, and seeing to it that her safety was a priority to her people.

Daario had called her stupid for it – taking under her wing the daughter of the woman who actively sought the ruin of her. And Dany has starting to suspect that while not stupid, she was being too careless in this regard. She hated them, the Starks, for what they brought to her life not once but twice. Yet she hasn’t taken on this child.

_She is just a babe, grubbed out from her mother's womb and stripped off her birthright – just like myself_.

Dany sighed heavily and looked down at her. She would never meet her mother for she was a corpse entombed in the dark halls of Winterfell's crypts. Her aunt perhaps was already dead. And Jon Snow…he was too far away in a land where only hardships and hardness prevail amidst ice and snow. Was she naive in thinking that maybe this child was now hers? Daenerys dispelled the notion as soon as it came to her. Her night terrors would not allow her such dreams.

Long gone and forgotten was to her the thought of a child of her own. _When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child_. And this child was not hers.

One day her family would return to take her in what’d be an improvement to their similar situations.

* * *

**Qohor**

Daenerys walked alone through the ruined battlements above the narrow high halls of Ar Noy. To the northeast by the Qhoyne, was the city of Qohor, which so far had kept a peaceful stance regarding her intent to have slavery eradicated from all the free cities. That until she went further east to deal with emperor Pol Qo, and its rulers decided it was time to set up a scheme to defend their city and lifestyle.

War was a tedious matter, she had come to think – she was even sick of it at some moments. She had no more intention of raining fire upon those rulers than they of giving in to her only requirement to maintain their dominion over their city. Nonetheless, clashing wills needed to reach a resolution and if there was no scope to resolve it peacefully, then the only option was to force them out. With fire and blood.

She puffed a breath at the sight of Daario approaching her. Earlier that day, they had an argument over the procedure of this siege. He insisted that she should abandon all initiative of peaceful surrender and mount Drogon now.

"We can't wait forever," he had said. 

"We will wait a little bit more," she replied.

He approached, fixing a sharp stare on her.

"We can't extend the siege. It will show you as a merciful fool."

Sometimes Daenerys asked herself what was the point of having him there with her, when they weren't even lovers anymore. In the past Daario had given her similar warnings, which if she had followed might she had obtained less adverse results. Tyrion Lannister thought he was a smart man like the spider, but those smart men gave her nothing but losses. And then there was Jon Snow, an honorable man who had killed her in a non-honorable way. Perhaps that was the reason why she valued Daario's presence now. He wasn't smart and he wasn't honorable. There were no pretenses with him. And now she pursued that kind of lightness, the one that did not torment her at night when the lost souls and the cries of children returned to haunt her.

"I am being practical," she spoke over his attempt to follow the argument. "Those men are valuable to me. They are not fighting my enemy's side for the sake of their rule but for gold they provided – I can give them that and join them to my cause." 

Daario looked at her reluctantly. Daenerys passed him by and close her eyes. When she opened them again, she eyed the landscape wistfully. Her thoughts returned briefly to Catrya and she wondered what the little one was doing right now.

"Where is the child?" Daario asked her as if reading her thoughts. 

Daenerys whipped his face at him. Suddenly, she became defensive. "Somewhere safe," she answered him. 

"I don't understand you."

_You never did_.

Alesseo and another guard came striding over and Dany again left Daario behind, talking alone.

"Your Grace, the captains of the Sellswords have come to talk to you," her young guard briefed. 

"Their captains?" Daario moved along. 

"They say so."

Dany considered it for a moment. It was true that she was growing weary of it all, and she knew all too well that extending the benefit could never end well. Still, she decided against her better judgment and one last time she would render a chance to surrender.

"Alright, I'll receive them," she agreed. The guards bowed their heads in assent and marched back the way they came. She looked at Daario. "What do you think they will say?"

His expression became serious. 

"Be careful," he warned in earnest. 

* * *

The air was thick with humidity. The day was hot and the skin felt sticky – it was not a day for a battle. So thought the Griff as its eyes roamed the high hall of the ancient city. There were three others awaiting the arrival of the Queen Daenerys. One of them was Vargo Hoat, a tall, gaunt, lisping man from Qohor who led the Brave Companion. And the other was Bloodbeard, a huge man with a great bush of a beard with fiery red whiskers and long braids that commanded the Company of the Cat and was known to be savage with a ferocious appetite for slaughter and no taste for peace.

A small, closed entourage of guards entered and descended the steps, stationing themselves at every column in the room. Finally, she who they were waiting crossed the high archway at the entry of the ruined hall, ethereal and regal as the tales told. He saw her mother's Rhaella beauty in her but also the same shadow of sadness hidden behind a mask of solemnity.

To her right side was Daario Naharis, another renowned mercenary who had stood by the queen's side since the days of her first conquests. Without the dragon by her side, he was the only other obstacle in the path toward her.

"I welcome you," she spoke in a thick Valyrian accent, "You surely come here with the terms of your employers."

The exchange was short and sharp between her and his companions while he patiently waited for his turn. Griff watched Bloodbeard clenching his fists on his weapon dangerously as the mood soured with each word Daenerys spoke.

"And who are you?" Daenerys addressed him. 

Griff walked to stand just in front of her and dropped to his knee, bowing.

"They call this the Old Griff and he commands the Stormcrows," Daario Naharis replied.

"Old Griff is how they know me, but my real name is another, Your Grace," he added, "Many years ago, I served your father and your brother Rhaegar. My name is Jon. Jon Connington, Your Grace."

* * *

** King's Landing, Westeros. **

"We received news from the North."

Tyrion spoke to his king but might as well he could be speaking to a wall.

"King Harrion rejected our offer," the broken boy replied, sounding calmer than he had ever heard to any of the other kings he served. "My cousin and my uncle rather choose to preserve the peace than retaliate against the man who killed my sister," he said, expressionless. "She wasn't killed though. She bled to death giving birth to her daughter."

Tyrion felt sickness swirling in the pit of his stomach. His insides twisted to imagine Sansa in such a circumstance and again that sting of guilt for having done little and nothing to help her.

"She was forced to take that decision because she was alone and saw no other choice. We could have helped her out."

"We could have," the King agreed. "And she could have chosen to stay in the Seven Kingdoms."

The reality is that they did not have the numbers or the support to send an army to the North. While Daenerys had marched two foreign armies so far north, it was the undeniable and furious loyalty of her men that had brought them so far. In the south, there was no such loyalty to any of them. With the famine settled in the regions, the conflicts with the great lords who resented having to pay more taxes so that the Crown could comply with the terms of the deferral of credit payments with the Iron Bank plus the tense relations with the Dornish people and the Ironborn, an uprising in the North was too much for this hecatomb that followed the death of Daenerys and the end of the war for the now destroyed Iron Throne.

Tyrion could understand that things were presented in a way that didn't matter how much one wanted to be able to do something more and not the most drastic, and yet it didn't feel right.

"She was your sister," the Hand reminded his King. Penetrating gaze fixed on the eyes of the being who called himself the three-eyed raven, something Tyrion still did not understand.

"I am not Brandon Stark," Brandon answered – reminded him as well. "She was the queen she chose to be. Didn't you think the same when Daenerys fell in disgraced by her own doing?" 

"Are you comparing Sansa to Daenerys?"

"I'm saying both were proud women whose falls were brought to them by themselves. You believed the same at some point. Sometimes we can't do more than observe and wait."

"That's cruel."

"A King's duty is often cruel. And I am the King."

A King made by a lot of people who had no idea what they were doing. Honestly, Tyrion was jaded and disgusted with himself at the time advocated for Bran during the great council. In hindsight, it had no true meaning. And the people there spoke words that meant little and nothing in the grand scheme of things. In the end, they came to not care for the idiot sitting in King's Landing calling himself King of a nation that was on fire.

Except for one who had done what he had done believing it to be the best. The right thing.

"What about Jon?" Tyrion asked aloud. Given the King's skill to see and know everything, Tyrion would not be surprised if he already knew of the seed already growing in his mind.

"He is trapped beyond the Wall where he chose to be."

"We should go get him."

"Why? Are you swinging your loyalty so fast, my Hand?"

"It's not that. He could be endangered," Tyrion lied. Of course, they needed him now. "Harrion killed Sansa and her child. What is stopping him from going after Jon?"

"Sansa's child wasn't killed," Bran revealed, putting a halt to the conversation. Tyrion was perplexed by the information he was only now sharing. "She was saved by the few Stark's loyalists remaining and delivered to Daenerys Targaryen."

_Seven hells_.

_Daenerys_. That event that would have been the greatest of their problems had it not been for his good queen (in better past times, at least) turning her back on revenge.

Who needed revenge when the consequences were enough?

"Daenerys must have already killed the poor child," Tyrion barely mumbled. 

"She didn't. She is taking care of her."

He was left open-mouthed again.

"Why?"

"Because she is repentant."

"About Sansa?"

"About everything." 

* * *

** Qohor, Essos. **

"You look just like her," Jon Connington observed. They were seated at a round table inside the pavilion set up by her soldiers. The dusty air could be felt over the incense burning. "You favor the looks of your mother, Queen Rhaella," he explained. 

Daenerys winced and shifted in her seat, fidgeting with her mother's ring on her finger. "You knew my mother?" she asked softly.

Jon nodded and fixed a doleful stare on her. "And your father, and your brother Rhaegar. I served as Hand for King Aerys."

Daenerys closed her eyes and sighed. She could barely remember those things now. Viserys used to nag at her with these things but this was the sort of knowledge she had let go of with time.

"I'm sorry I have very little knowledge of that time," she humbly admitted. 

"You are not to blame, Your Grace. You weren't even born."

So why after all the time that had elapsed now, was he presenting himself before her? Daenerys could not help but feel mistrustful. 

"What has brought you today here, Lord Connington, that couldn't bring you before?"

"I ought to apologize for that, Your Grace," Old Griff responded. His eyes shone with guilt. "I've failed twice your family. Once in the times of the rebellion. And then again when I abandoned my duty toward you."

"You had none, that I reckon. But it is curious to me, that you will care about it now."

"You are the rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms," he stated, followed by a long silence in which Dany took in a long breath as a stream of cool air raced through the flaps.

"There are no more Seven Kingdoms, my Lord," she reminded him. Surely he was aware of that. 

Something like a grunt escaped from the back of his throat.

"I heard the Stark drew on your resources to obtain their Thrones," he spat and his nostrils flared with heavy breathing. "Queen Sansa Stark of the North, she died as her brother before her. Betrayed by her own vassals. The Northerners know nothing of honor, as they claim."

Dany snickered and licked her lips.

"Some things are the same regardless of the place in the world we are. That's what I know."

Lord Connington nodded, looking down with a frown. Then he looked up and Daenerys saw a question in his eyes.

"I've heard stories...of your short sojourn in Westeros."

He spoke apprehensively, and not in vain as Daenerys' face contorted and she winced again.

"You are wrong," she began, "When you say I am the rightful Queen. I am not."

* * *

** Braavos. **

The eyes of the Titan of Braavos did not shine with fury as they had done the first time Arya came to the city, looking down at her with a latent threat that she recalled from Old Nan's tales, of that terrible creature that would wake up to defend the city of its enemies and that was fed on the juicy pink flesh of little highborn girls. Old Nan's tales had fallen short of the horrors Arya had witnessed.

When the cold winds blow the lone wolf dies and the pack survives, she kept chanting the words in her mind. But it was stupid. She left home. Bran was not Bran. Jon had been exiled for killing his queen and Sansa had taken advantage of it all to get the crown she had wanted so much. A crown that, like Robb before her, had cost a blood price – blood shed by their own countrymen. Those from the North are different from the rest, she thought she heard someone in her family say once but Arya had understood that it was not like that. Maybe it was the fact that Sansa had been left in a limited perspective of the world or it was the fact of the time she spent being an object in the hands of the enemy, either way, there was a certain naivety about her. And that's why today Arya regretted it all. She should have stayed at home. She should have been there for her sister to defend her from the harm that would eventually befall her.

This inevitably led her to think of Sansa’s daughter, Catrya. The first time she entered Daenerys' tent and found the red-haired babe sitting on the pallet among wooden toys and furs, Arya had felt an apprehension that she would carry forever upon seeing her. It wasn't the feeling she was expected to have with someone who was her own blood but the love and affection weren't there, not yet. Not because she rejected her but because she simply could not find the way to those feelings when guilt and resentment flooded her. Arya believed that when she carried out her revenge, then she would be free again. That's how it had been when she ended House Frey and Littlefinger, and while she hadn't been able to reach Cersei thanks to the Hound's intervention, she had found pleasure in watching Cersei's reign go to ashes. That is until she left Red Keep and then found a beast equal to or worse than the Titan of Braavos.

Her thoughts went to Daenerys. The dragon queen continued to be to her a mysterious and distant figure she couldn’t yet puzzle out. Even so, Arya had entrusted her with the care of her niece, who was perhaps the last scion of the House Stark and the future of it as was her mother before her. She thought then of the cruel irony of life and how much Sansa would despise her for having entrusted her offspring with the woman she despised so much that she was capable to break a sacred oath to get her out of the way. She betrayed Jon. And since Daenerys burned down King's Landing, Arya had let that fault slip before her eyes even when her instincts had told her it would happen. Even if it had destroyed Jon.

Arya sighed. It was too late to fix it, to acknowledge past mistakes, and move on. She was not the Dragon Queen, who for some reason found the strength to carry on despite bearing with her tremendous guilt and all the sorrow that come with losing everyone you love, added to the betrayal that still took its toll on the person she was today. Arya was ashamed to admit that if she had been in Daenerys place, she would have ravaged Westeros. Not because she was crueler, which perhaps she was, but because she hadn't learned to let go of her desire for revenge. Once she tasted its sweet flavor, she hadn't been able to give it up and thirst was killing her right now.

The last time she’d been in Braavos, the task of becoming a faceless man had eventually been impossible for her. At the slightest opportunity for retaliation presented to her, she had relented. She murdered Ser Meryn Trant – and she enjoyed it. She was not _No One_ , she was Arya Stark of Winterfell and the transgressions committed against her or against her family, could not be overlooked. No, she was not returning to the house of black and white to finish becoming no one.

She was there to play a game.

* * *

**Qohor**.

The knight's expression was between confusion and disgust. An array of conflicting emotions swirled at his core.

"I can believe he fathered a child with her," he still was mystified. _His silver prince_. "What I cannot believe is that he would disregard his other children like that." Griff couldn't even say it aloud. Rhaegar made Rhaenys and Aegon bastards in favor of this child "...Jon Snow," he spoke out inadvertently, gauging a reaction from Daenerys that as soon as it came, she suppressed it.

"He repeatedly stated he wished no part in it. He was...a Stark through and through," she said.

His blue eyes fixed on her a sympathetic stare.

"Stories tell he deserted you."

"We did have different views on several matters. Yes."

"About what? About the city?"

He came to her conscious of her deeds in King's Landing and though at first, he has been frankly surprised, it didn't deter him from wanting to find her. More than ever after he heard that she was killed by the bastard of Ned Stark, who rumors said he also was her lover at some point. 

_He is her nephew_ , Griff realized. A kinslayer if rumors were true.

"About everything," Daenerys replied after a long pause. 

The serious, icy eyes that had greeted him had fallen with a feeling of regret he knew all too well. In half of a heartbeat, she hid her vulnerability again under the veil of indifference and avoided his gaze as she explained, "Jon is a good man. As honorable as his father, Ned Stark."

Griff suppressed the urge to spit at hearing that name.

"His father was Rhaegar," Jon snapped. She stirred uncomfortably and relented on his harsh tone. "I asked your forgiveness, Your Grace. What I say is that if he feels such animosity for his true identity and would rather be a Stark bastard instead, then he doesn't deserve to be called the blood of the dragon. He doesn't deserve-"

"Seldom," her Grace interrupted with a clear, sharp voice, "Are we deserving of our destinies. We do not choose the duties that fall on us but we do choose which of those we meet. And Jon has always been respectful of what he considers the greater good. He never had the vocation of a ruler, that's true. But people entrusted him with their lives. They have looked up to him when humanity was at its darkest hour-"

"You loved him," Old Griff cut her off. It was plain encumbered in her face. 

She swallowed nervously. 

"Now you're being presumptuous, Ser," Daenerys warned.

"I ask your pardon again, Your Grace," Griff backed off. For a moment Dany saw Jorah in his gaze, always regretting overstepping boundaries. "Let me serve you. I know I failed in the past. Terribly. For my being a weak coward, you lost your chance of a childhood and your place as a princess. Because of me, Rhaegar was killed. Let me serve you as you wish. I can tell you everything about your family. You are the last dragon, Daenerys. The last true dragon." 

"I may be," she agreed, before a long, pregnant pause. "How many men are under your command? Are they good enough to face an enemy in their own land?"

He assumed she was talking about what was relevant to them at the time and the original reason they were there.

"Of course, my Queen. They are. We are a hundred mounted soldiers." When a grimace began to form on her face, he added, "You shouldn't worry about the other captains. I can convince them to fight for your side."

"How?"

"Sellswords know of the Golden Company. No man wishes the same fate."

"Very well, Ser Connington," She stood up and clasped her hands in front. "You and your mercenaries are to leave the walls of Qohor today and sally forth to Braavos. Right there we will meet again and you will command those men across the Narrow Sea to Westeros."

Jon's heart raced when hearing the determination in her voice.

  
"And you Ser," she continued, "You will look for Jon Snow."

* * *

**Haunted Forest, Westeros**. 

The whistling of the wind was his only company in the days that he spent in the shelter of the Haunted Forest watching the Wall in the distance. Jon didn't think he could remember even the sound of his own voice anymore. The last time he'd had a conversation, it had been with Tormund a few days ago.

"My sister is dead," he let him know. Not because Jon wanted to make it clear that Sansa had nothing to do with the new hunt that was restored against his people but because Tormund was the only person to whom Jon believed to owe an explanation, including of his silences.

"How can you know?" he asked skeptically.

"Because I know this story by heart," Jon replied.

Every time there was a new king, there was a dead one too. It was the same story that had been told in the Seven Kingdoms since Aegon's coming. 

"There must be an important reason for them to hunt us again, then," opined his wildling friend.

"They're not hunting you, they're after me. And you're in the middle," Jon admitted.

"And what are we going to do?"

Jon had considered his question in his mind. He did not have the means to cross the Shivering Sea to White Harbor, and even if he did, he would be recognized there. In the west, there were more wall and the Ironborn. It was as if they had found a way to keep him on this side of the wall, where he would have stayed had he not being provoked.

_There is only one way..._ he mulled over, blurred the blurred line that marked the top of the Wall.

"I don't have a plan if that's what you ask," Jon had answered harshly. It wasn't exactly true.

"You never needed a plan, little crow."

Jon took a deep breath.

"This is the first time that I... I have no power to fix this." His thoughts turned to that place he constantly struggled to hold back, not let it take over his sanity. "I could have, but I didn't want to. I had the power at some point to make a difference and here we are, at the beginning."

Tormund remained silent, knowing there was no point in trying to convince him otherwise. In telling him of the injustices that had been committed against him.

"There are still people in the south besides your sister," Tormund pondered.

Jon turned abruptly and replied stoically, "Tormund, my brother is a magical being with the ability to see it all. If he had wanted to help me, he would have already done so. I am of no use to them now. Not anymore."

"So what? Are we to stay here doing nothing?"

"No," Jon stated decisively. There was only one way. "I will kill them all."


	13. Revelry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost split this chapter in two but I prefer to start rushing things since we are at 50,000 words and only halfway through. Thank you in advance ❤.

** "Revelry" **

**316 After Aegon's Conquest**.

She was having a recurring dream. 

In it, lighted candles dimly illuminated the boat's cabin, and they burned as time and themselves in each other, reaching the imminent moment where the flame died out like their passion. Meanwhile, the gentle sway of the ship kept them drunken calm and oblivious of the ending coming.

They should have been more careful. Although there were risks that were never taken, Dany now reckoned. 

His fingers slid up her hips, her ribs, and then the mound of her left breast, leaving a trace where he would later on leave another type of mark. From there his touch traveled up to her neck until his fingers curled under her chin to lifted up her face, forcing her to look into his eyes. He said nothing and at the same time, Dany saw thoughts piling up behind thoughtful eyes.

Her eyes fluttered upward in expectation.

"What are you thinking?" she asked him, eager to know what mysterious hid Jon Snow's mind. During those early moments, she still thought him a sort of riddle to puzzle out. 

His fingers smoothed the side of her face as he softly answered with another question, "Why do you believe in the witch words?"

The unexpectedness of his question muddled her and Daenerys wondered herself again what led her to confess something as intimate as her barrenness to him that day in the dragonpit. The delicacy of the matter was not amiss on her. Tyrion took it upon himself to remind her that, as a woman, her capability as a ruler was already in question. Being a woman who could not provide heirs complicated it twice.

Even so, Daenerys persisted in her belief that she was destined to rule the Seven Kingdoms and claim the throne of her family. If everything depended on her being absolutely resolute about it, she would do it to the end.

How could she not? Why had fate made her who she was if not to prove that she was not destined to do so?

Dany took a deep breath and looked at Jon Snow, at the marks on his chest that twisted the skin imperfect. _He took a knife in the heart for his people_. She fought down the urge to bend her head to kiss him there as she had done a thousand times by now but brought her hand instead.

"I asked the witch when my husband would return to me and her words were these: when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before. I could remember them perfectly to this day." 

Her response struck him; she could notice. He still wasn't convinced and that has spurred his concern over their coupling and the consequences of it. 

"I am drinking Moon Tea," she reassured him knowingly. "Either I can't have them or I am doomed to die bringing a child to this world. In any case, I have so many things to do yet. I cannot afford to die, Jon Snow."

It was strange how calling him by both names made it easier to bring some sense of normalcy between them even at moments of intimacy. She could feel his heartbeat quickening beneath her palm and the beginning of his arousal against her thighs. 

"I will not let you," he said as a promise but that part of her was not sure if that actually happened.

Perhaps in the end she imagined it all.

* * *

Daenerys woke up gasping for air as silk sheets fell down her bare body. Her cabin felt hot beyond endurance as she stepped up out of bed and walked toward the cabin's window, seeking to sate her need for fresh air. Tears welled up in her eyes with the acute sensation of being invaded by her innermost emotions again, the very ones she had bottled and thrown into the sea long ago, only for the bottle to return to the shores of her memories.

Either these or the darker ones that involved screamings and fire, it was all an ordeal that she brought upon herself to carry every day of what remained of her life.

* * *

"A letter from our favorite southern lady," Davos joked, checking one of the open letters Jon had left on his desk. One he had read several times that night to try to prove to himself that there was something else on his mind other than the thought of Daenerys. It only had served to chafe at the burden of them. Since then, he'd been trying to drown it out with the wine that had been kindly deposited in his cabin. 

When Davos settled on the chair across from him, Jon's eyes looked at him not gently.

"You've never told me," he said. 

"Told you what?"

"You also betrayed her." His tone was direct, without a doubt in his affirmation. "You helped Tyrion to get Cersei and Jaime out of the city."

Perhaps it was evoking the memory of those times and of Tyrion Lannister, for whom of all of them, Jon held the greatest resentment towards, for having used his cunning character for his purposes and Jon's honor against himself.

Despite acknowledging that, bitterness crept into his tone.

"I smuggled a boat," Davos accepted, repentant. "I knew they will never make it, Jon. It was just–"

"But who am I to judge you when I was who killed her, right?" Jon cut him off. He swallowed everything in his glass and poured himself more, trying to let the acid taste of the wine help him disguise his uneasiness. Davos frowned at that.

"Because we didn't do enough. Or we did enough to make it happen. Of all of us, you have the noblest heart, Jon." 

Jon's expression twisted as if he wanted to laugh, cry, and show himself outraged by the statement.

"Do I have it? Or am I a tool for everyone else's devices?" Jon jumped to his feet and walked to the window for fresh air, staggering his way there but hiding it to make it look like it was the movement of the boat and not its unkempt state. If Arya saw him at that moment, she would be beating him until his body was a sack of bones. "The more I am here the more I want to go back."

"You love her," Davos pointed out, watching Jon in his most fragile and vulnerable state as no one else saw him except perhaps Jon Connington when he was alive. It was because of these he avoided people after supper, not even his sister or niece could watch him like this. Much less Daenerys.

Jon shook his head from one side to another. He loved her when he made his way to her bed. He loved her when he put distance between them. He loved her when he didn't step forward to try to bring some conform after what happened. Jon slowly whirled around and run a hand through his hair. _You know nothing, Jon Snow_ , he recalled Ygritte’s words. She thought him too naive. But now he could think that back and see it in a different light as if always along the way there was a lack in him that always stand between him and whatever that it is in front of him that it is not an enemy. He knew how to deal with his enemies, to those who make him or others wrong. But the rest...

Despite the obvious breakdown caused by the drink, there was a clear trace of the Jon that mulled his words over before speaking them. His eyes drooped in an expression of desolation, as every time he broached the subject.

"I was the one who has to make justice. For all the people that died. Yet, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't. It wasn't that what moved my hand, Davos. It was fear. Fear because I see what she was able to do and what she might do to those who wronged her. Those that I loved. So she died – she had to die. And I cried over her dead body as if I had a right to it. And those who hurt her then rejoiced in the outcome of her sacrifices. Including myself. I got to be free, as I wanted. Where is the justice in that?"

It sounded like a question.

"It would be so easy if she had returned and killed us instead of–"

"You cannot torture yourself with it, son," Davos stopped him. "We all made conscious choices. _She made a choice_."

"Yes," Jon agreed with a bitter tone. He slumped back in his chair and took the letter from Lady Alyssa Hightower back in his hands, reading her words while in his mind he saw Dany's face. "We all did." 

* * *

Absently, Dany lowered the cup onto its saucer and set it on the edge of the table where a modest feast had been served. Among different dishes of sweets, fruits, and exotic drinks, books, parchment, and ink were also placed atop of it. 

"Very well, aunt. Now repeat with me: In mari meri miri mori muri necesse est."

_In a sea of delicious wine, a mouse can only die_. Daenerys smiled as her eyes flicked to Catrya urging Arya to repeat tongue twisters in dead tongues. Arya made one failed attempt, then another, before becoming frustrated and questioning what the point of reciting words from a dead tongue was. 

"It helps the memory. It's also fun," Catrya replied proudly, which if Dany guessed it was a trait she had inherited from her mother. "Queen Dany can speak all tongues. Dead and living."

"That's not quite accurate," replied Daenerys with a soft laugh, who had a report on her lap in a language that was neither High Valyrian nor the Common Tongue. "But I met someone once who spoke and read nineteen languages."

Her heart skipped a beat at the sudden memory of Missandei. It had been unwittingly to bring her up in that conversation, after not having named her in what seemed like an eternity. With whom was she going to do it? Daario was not that kind of company. With Arya, the conversation would probably end with Sansa and that was not a comfortable place for Daenerys to go, no matter that she was raising her daughter. And with Catrya...she was just a little girl. Daenerys had never told her about her life before she came into her life more than ambiguous and insubstantial details.

"How can anyone know nineteen languages?" Catrya wondered, stunned as she flipped through her book. This would not be the day they would talk about Missandei. Instead, her comment gave Catrya another reason to nag her aunt into repeating the tongue twister. 

A sudden sensation chilled her bones as out of the corner of her eye, Daenerys noticed an arm snaking past her, without warning, making her let out a scream and she hit her arm, causing the cup on the table to fall with a clash on the wooden floor.

She looked up to find Jon standing too close, his face tinged with guilt.

"S-Sorry," he stammered an apology, walking quickly away from her as Daenerys jumped up from her seat to put it between them. "I saw that the cup was on the edge, and it was going to fall. It was not my intention–" his words hung in the air as Alesseo and another guard –his guard, entered the room. Suddenly The Rhaegal felt too small to carry them both. 

"Your Majesty?" Alesseo aimed a question towards her. 

"Everything is in order. It was an accident," replied Arya, who also stood up. "It's just a fucking broken cup."

"Aunt!" Catrya scolded Arya, oblivious to the restlessness.

"Everything is in order, Ser," Daenerys declared to the two guards who were waiting for an answer. Her eyes fell on the broken cup and then on Jon. "It was an accident."

* * *

"My brother is carrying the remnants of a drunk night," Arya pointed out as she ducked into the captain's meeting cabin alongside Ser Davos, leaving the others behind to go about their business. "Since when does Jon drink himself into slumber?"

The condition in which he had crawled into the dining cabin today did not go unnoticed to his sister, and concern soared at how affected he seemed. 

Ser Davos looked away but spoke in a clear tone.

"Your brother is a man of war, my Lady. Soldiers generally need a strong drink to help them fall asleep."

"I am not a Lady and Jon never needed it. He wasn't like that," she argued.

Davos snorted in disbelief.

"Do you truly believe Jon is the same man you bid farewell at King's Landing?"

_No_ , Arya knew. He was not the same. He never would be. Not after what he had been through, what he had done to protect the realm and the people he loves. His punishment had been unjust, but she believed then that he would be happy where he had been the last few years – with the people he had chosen to be happy with.

The truth was that Arya no longer knew who her brother was, if the melancholic man whose misfortune was to be good, or if the fragile human being who marched on the brink of a breakdown.

"So is that so? Is my brother going down the same path as King Robert?" Arya wondered as she remembered that flabby man who was her father's best friend.

"He doesn't fuck everything that has two legs or swallow everything we put on his plate," Davos differentiated with a crooked eyebrow.

"Seven hells that's good to know," she replied half-jokingly half-seriously. "Has he been like this since then or has he gotten worse now?"

"Jon is a man of duty and honor. He would never betray his decency even if he wanted to," he tried to bring some reassurance, nervously clenching his hands on the handle of his cane. "But being here on a boat with her again..."

"Again?"

"Well, that's how it started it all with Daenerys. On the journey from Dragonstone to White Harbor."

Arya closed her eyes regretfully.

"That poor fool is still in love with her," she murmured.

Ser Davos laughed. "And are you surprised?"

"I thought there was only remorse," she suggested.

"Love and remorse," pondered the old man, "Two feelings that go hand in hand."

Arya nodded and ruffled her hair, feeling the beads of sweat on the back of her neck. She rested one elbow on the table and her chin in her clenched fist, thoughtfully.

"How do we fix this Davos?" she asked with such sincerity that it felt as if they were talking about a situation so dire that it was final. "How do we make everything go back to the way it was before everything was ruined?"

"To begin with, things never go back to the way they were before. Time always leaves its mark on us. Look at me."

"You're fine," Arya shrugged it off, though she wasn't blind to how much travel was harder to him now. His statement, however, made her reflect on the past. "I abandoned her, you know? When Daenerys arrived with Catrya in her arms and the news of my sister's death, I abandoned my niece to seek revenge."

Unsurprised, he asked, interested, "And how did that turn out?"

"Too good for my own good."

The old man nodded. Her eyes turned dark and he felt the need to let her know, "He killed him. Jon had no mercy on him."

"He didn't have it with Lord Tyrion either," Arya celebrated, whose death she had heard not from Jon but from those who recounted his exploits in war. This made her ponder to herself aloud, eyes downcast, "Not even with Bran..."

"That was necessary," Davos reminded her.

"I know," she swallowed, "Jon is always doing what is necessary. What is right, even to his own detriment. And Daenerys too."

"The two of them carry burdens that they don't seem to want to put down anytime soon," agreed the Hand of the King. "We can't force them to release it. We can talk to them, try to make them see reason, and then the decision is in their hands."

Arya rubbed her fingers reflectively across her forehead. Her brow furrowed with a thought that came suddenly.

"Where is Gendry?" she asked.

With wide eyes, Ser Davos replied, "He rules Storm's End with the help of a council." 

When Arya kept looking at him expectantly, he kept on telling.

"The fact that he wears the bloody face of the late Robert Baratheon helped to settle his claim. But not without its struggles. I helped him in the first years and I was by his side. As soon as Jon's reconquest began, he was among the first to be there, by his side."

Arya smiled with sincere affection.

  
"I do not doubt it. He cherished Jon very much."

  
"Not only Jon, I understand–"

"I'm going to see if the sailors need help with those moorings," she said, smiling and cheeky avoiding the subject.

* * *

From where he was, he watched Daenerys and Catrya standing on the forecastle, with their backs to him and the rest of the crew, whispering confidences and pointing to whatever was on the horizon. Silver and red manes shining in the glow of a wake of sun. 

"She has a good heart," a presence at his side, Daario Naharis, burst in suddenly. He stood next to him with folded hands in his front. "Daenerys," he said as if he needed to clarify.

Jon glanced at him suspiciously, not without showing agreement. 

"I know."

"No, you don't. If you did, you wouldn't have struck a knife into her good heart."

Jon glared at him with his mouth opened. 

"Yes, she burned down a city, but what did you expect? After everything that had happened, what did you expect?" the sellsword insisted again. Was he still a sellsword? Jon wondered. What was this man in Daenerys' inner circle? For some reason, he dreaded the answer. "If I had been there, none of that would have happened."

"What makes you so sure about it?" Jon asked skeptically, who over the years had also assessed the many things that could have been done differently.

Daario fixed a challenging look on him.

"Because she would never have fallen for you."

Of all the answers Jon could have given, that was the one that stung his chest.

Jon took a breath and looked back at the front just when Daenerys had turned around. She leaned down to speak something to Catrya in her ear.

"Where I come from there is a saying," he started to say, "Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle." Jon turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. If he got what he meant, Daario didn't let him know.

Catrya's soft throat clearing interrupted them.

"Uncle," she addressed him kindly and finely, "Could you come with me, please?"

"Of course," Jon said, a nurturing feeling taking over his sour mood. 

Daenerys had descended onto the deck by the parallel ladder to the one that led him to the forecastle and they couldn't help but look at each other as they made their way. And in that look, he found a reassuring effect that, for some remote and inexplicable reason, made Daario's words rang empty. 

"Look, that's the Free City of Pentos," Catrya pointed out, stirring him out of his thoughts.

Jon's eyes settled on the view in front of him. Great buildings rose majestically in a golden set of rectangular towers that seemed to be built of pure gold. The walls could not hide its beauty. Blurred shadows stalked the buildings which only let him know of the extent of the city beyond the naked eye view. 

"It's...wonderful," was all he could say.

* * *

**Pentos, Essos**.

The road from the port to the more residential area of the city was laden with unexpected merriment. One that none of them but Daenerys and her people, among whom was Catrya, would have anticipated. Still, Daenerys was reserved in her reactions and expressions, smiling at her people when necessary and saving the rest for the moment that was more appropriate. 

  
"Seven hells," Arya muttered under her breath, who had been riding alongside Jon and whose reaction mirrored his own at seeing how an overly exalted person had thrown himself at Daenerys before being held back by a soldier.

"That's normal?" Jon asked, who still had one hand resting on Longclaw on his belt.

"That people throw themselves at her? There are even places where she is worshiped as a god. Daenerys tries not to encourage such behavior," she replied.

"Have you been here before?"

"In Pentos?"

"In Pentos during _the celebration_ ," Jon clarified, glancing at Catrya, who was also riding close to them but surrounded by four horsemen on either side of her making it impossible for any attack to target her. "Speaking of which, what is celebrated?"

"Her crowning."

Jon whipped his face at his sister.

"I didn't know that she had held a coronation."

"Not exactly a coronation, but a celebration of the day that she concluded with the union of the free cities under her rule. Or so I think. The truth is that she never talks about it."

Jon nodded silently and looked around at the crowd aroused by her presence, a stark contrast to what she had met at Winterfell, where she had come to save them.

Once within the ramparts of a sprawling small castle-like estate, Jon got off his horse and gazed around at the beauty of the graceful gardens that decorated the pillared courtyard overgrown with ivy. Both here and at her residence in Braavos, he observed their presence. The manse was nothing more than an extension of the luxury he had seen since he first sighted the city, with nine towers and high brick walls. Inside, you could breathe the perfume of spices, a pinch of fire, lemon, and cinnamon. A colored glass mosaic in the entry hall displayed the Doom of Valyria. Ceilings rose above wide columns forming corridors and lounges that were not short of colorful and extravagant decorations.

Daario Naharis and the queen's guard paced the place knowingly while he and his people stood contemplative and expectant. Catrya had run off in the direction of a place only she could know.

Daenerys walked towards them. That day she was clad in a light dress suitable for the weather and that made his thoughts betray him and go to the wrong places. The dark markings that decorated the skin on her arms still seemed surprising to him but not unpleasant. Jon actually felt curious about them.

"Be welcome," she told them with a tight smile. "I do not see why the king's guard should not be accommodated as it suits his needs. Ser Alesseo is the commander of my guard and will be at your disposal for any queries. Baths and more comfortable clothing will be provided for you in your chambers. In the meantime, I am afraid we will not we will see again until the night of the celebrations." She paused, her gaze on him. "Your Grace. Ser Hand. Arya," she said goodbye to each one of them, walking away down a corridor that led her to some unknown place.

* * *

Arya closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth of the sun and the sound of splashing water, children's laughter, and chirping birds. Close to her, the soft noise coming from the quill sliding over the parchment was the only indication of Jon's presence, who was busy with administrative affairs of his reign. Every so often she would hear him sigh regretfully and enthusiastically. 

"I have a question," she broke in, still with her eyes closed. She was sitting across from him, the table littered with scrolls and papers. "Why do you still love her?"

Although she didn't see it, Arya knew he stiffened at her question.

"I don't..." he tried to evade but she fixed a knowing look on him. 

"Don't have the nerve to lie to my face," she warned him.

Jon sighed and his shoulders slumped in defeat. His eyes wandered around the garden where they had sat to watch Catrya and a group of children bathe in the pools and play. Jon had no idea where those other infants had come from but he was overjoyed to see his niece engrossed in childish joy.

"It's not something I can put into words," he began to explain, "I was never good with words. But she can still take my breath away when I'm around her," he admitted.

"So is the beauty of her?"

  
"No," he stated. "Well, yes. But it's not only that."

"Did you love her when she burned King's Landing?" She interrupted abruptly. "I'm not judging you. Not her, not you." She put on an expression of doubt at her own words. "Maybe at her a little bit. I just want to understand the twisted way in which neither of you seems to be able to move on."

"I don't think she feels the same way."

"Please!" Arya complained, "What would she do everything she does for you. Anyone else in her place–"

"That's the thing. Anyone else in her place would not do what she does. Only her, only Daenerys," he asserted with anger at sensing the attack on her person. "She has never needed reasons to do what is right." He remembered that past they shared, the times that she could've made the most practical decision but she set above the greater good to her own detriment. Everything that cost her in the end. "She only knows it," he mused, taking in a sharp breath. "King's Landing was a tragedy. I'm not saying that I believe she is not responsible for her actions. I think we all are accountable to some extent. But she paid for it with her life and then she came back to be the person she's always been. The person to who I believed in before everything had crumbled."

Arya fell silent contemplating his response. After a while, she leaned back against the back of her chair and closed her eyes again. 

"I've been to many places, met many people, but love is something I will never understand," she opined, her mind working on possibilities that might not take place. When she heard him drink from his glass of wine, her stomach clenched in worry. "I know of your careless drinking," she let him know.

"I'm not carelessly drinking," he contradicted, lowering his glass.

Arya fixed him an incredulous look.

"I asked you not to lie to my face."

* * *

"These are fascinating news!" Magister Gaderon celebrated after she conferred with them on King Jon's concession of Dragonstone. "The united cities of Essos have long required a point in the west to facilitate commercial transactions-"

"The Free cities are still free cities, do well to remember Magister," interrupted the Lady Pearl of Pentos, an elderly woman who served as ruler of the city ever since Daenerys took over. A woman of resolute and firm character who was not afraid to contradict the queen when necessary. She turned solemn eyes to Daenerys. "I understand that the westerosi King's visit has certain implications."

"Which ones?" Daenerys tensed. 

"Like those that occur between two young rulers of the same family whose survival hangs by a thread."

She breathed calmly and returned a serene but deep look.

"King Jon is only a distant relative, born of the union of two westerosis noble houses." Saying this to avoid having to face the rumors that still chased her. "I instead have been wandering my own way for a long time. I don't understand why such confusion."

"So this is not a formal alliance?"

"It is an alliance to some extent."

"What is the nature of it then?"

"What are you really worried about, Lady Pearl?" Daenerys halted her questioning. Of all the people sitting there, she was the one Daenerys respected the most. But that day she seemed determined to antagonize her.

Lady Pearl straightened up and spoke clearly, "You are a conqueror. You do not rule any of the Free Cities but you make sure to keep us under your yoke with the sole mastery of a weapon that no one else holds. What I mean and what concerns me as the ruler of one of your domains is, what will happen when there is no longer a Daenerys Targaryen that could watch over us?"

Daenerys felt as if she had been slapped and brought her back to reality. Sometimes she didn't allow herself to think too much about her next death and what would happen after it because when that had happened before, with no one to continue her legacy, things in Essos had not gone well for her people. 

"Do you think about that a lot, Lady Pearl?" she asked with a note of resentment and defiance. 

"Of course. It's my job," the elderly woman replied, undaunted. 

"If I may contribute to the topic under discussion, Queen Daenerys did not take control of the free and united cities of Essos by birthright. Our next ruler may as well be elected," contributed Lord Amos Felysse, who was in charge of diplomatic affairs within her council.

"What would be the point of keeping such dominance then?" Lady Pearl blurred out. "It would be ridiculous to suppose that in such a case we will be subject to a Westerosi ruler because of the immediacy of her closest relations be the westerosi King's offspring."

At that, Daenerys swallowed hard and looked down at her lap. She needed a moment to pick up her train of thought again and provide an appropriate response.

  
 _I've never needed a man by my side to rule, I'm not going to need it now_ , is what she thought immediately but it sounded too emotional. Like she's losing her temper. Telling them she believed she wasn't able to conceive children would lead to having to give more explanations that she didn't want to delve into. Over the years she had been presented with proposals but she'd always rejected them as they were unnecessary, being she who she was. 

She had come to a conclusion in one of the many times she rambled on her situation, and this was the day she would have to elaborate on it with her council.

"The alliance with King Jon is merely a deal in good faith," she began, "However, in a near future, his children will be immediate claimants of whatever is left of my domains." The thought of it immediately came with a feeling of reluctance. "Of Drogon, perhaps." If her child took them. "And if that's the case, then Essos will fall under the symbolic rule of an heir to House Targaryen, keeping their governments and laws as long as slavery is not re-established." The men and women at the table looked at her with wide eyes. Dany focused her eyes on Lady Pearl. "Is that enough for you?"

Dany knew she had just raised an issue that would have them worried. One that would lead to many speaking behind her back. She didn't really care. Anyway, her chest had once again clutch with the sorrow that always overtook her every time, she remembered how alone she was in this world.

_Anyway, the next time I die, it will be the last time I die_. Or so she hoped.

* * *

The weather was too much for him. Jon could even sense the annoyance in Ser Gerold and his guards who were southrons. How could these people bear it? Jon weighed these questions in his head as he donned the light (linen, he believed) colorful cloth garb that the servants graciously deposited in his chambers.

A similar march to that of the day they arrived awaited them and from there they would ride to the Prince’s Palace, where the ruling council of the city resided. Jon didn't really know what to expect. He hardly enjoyed Westerosi feasts, if what awaited them was as loud as that then Jon could already feel overwhelmed. After this, it would come the inevitable departure.

He immediately thought of Catrya and what would become of her then. In the days that had followed the confrontation in Braavos up to this point, nothing else had been addressed on that subject. At least not with her. The words just didn't come out of him every time he spent time with her, too delighted to see her so lost in her childish world.

She seemed indifferent to the intense weather and the strenuousness of that day's activities, behaving like one more lady within the queen's circle, attending to formalities, and showing herself happy and cheerful at all times. It was like seeing the girl that Sansa once was, before her dream of princes and castles had turned to ashes in her mouth. Jon made a silent vow to see to it that it would never happen to her daughter.

They were dragged into a great hall once they reached the Prince's Palace. And once there, attention inevitably turned to him. People came and addressed him formally, initiating conversations that always became convoluted for him to follow them with enthusiasm. Their tedious attention on him only siphoned when Daenerys made her appearance, shuffling into the room dragging a blue gown that he could only describe as exotic and dazzling.

"For your mouth, Your Grace," Davos jested at his side, handing Jon a handkerchief.

* * *

The evening fell into a lighter spirit as the aura of elegance and reserve faded out. The actors who entertained the attendants became more absurd in their stories and soon began to slip jokes and bawdy banalities. At that moment, Daenerys ordered the children to be taken out of the hall back to their homes, including Catrya who obeyed without a single complain. 

Daenerys eyes searched for her guests in the room full of people she knew only in passing and incidentally. Both Arya and her brother were not adept at celebrations, seeking the most remote place to avoid attracting any attention. She smiled at how similar they were. Her smile died when she finally found one of them, the one who, no matter how hard he tried, had failed to avoid being caught. Jon was having a conversation with a young woman, someone Daenerys did not recognize with the naked eye but who from a distance looked like a beautiful and noble woman.

She looked away and set her eyes on the glass in her hands, feeling her mouth go dry and embittered. She shouldn't allow herself to feel apprehensive about it. She shouldn't. But she couldn't help it and admitting that hurt her pride as a woman.

Inadvertently, her hand traveled to her chest and there she felt under her left breast the texture of the scar that was the memory of what had happened the last time she allowed those feelings for him grow. 

They had to get out of here as soon as possible. All of them, all of the Starks. Jon, Arya, Catrya.

_Catrya_.

Catrya was her child, they had no right to take her from her after everything they had already taken from her. It was unfair. It was the first time that she let those thoughts in her mind. It was selfish and mistaken but she was a selfish and mistaken woman in many ways.

Feeling defeated by those thoughts, Daenerys rose from her seat and walked out of the great hall towards the terrace, indicating to her guards not to follow her.

* * *

The night sky shone with stars and a full moon. Down in the city, fires still burned as the people kept celebrating and enjoying the late evening. Her humor seemed not to meet to either of those two expressions.

She heard footsteps approaching.

"Your Grace," Alesseo walked out into the terrace and spoke softly.

She whirled around to dismiss him. "I want to be left alone," she started to say but she found him with a hard expression. 

"King Jon is in the hall, awaiting your permission to come and speak with you."

He made it clear he was against it.

Dany sighed and nodded.

"It's alright."

He stayed still.

"I suggest that you allow me to be here with you," he asked.

Daenerys frowned in disagreement.

"I'd rather not, Alesseo."

The least she wanted was to be seen as a victim every time she and Jon were in the same room. 

"Whatever you wish,"he obeyed.

Daenerys turned and leaned on the balustrade and gazed at the city walls in the distance. She sighted the temple of the red god and its huge fire on the roof that burned high every night.

"It's not seen as a very polite gesture for the only two monarchs to leave the feast around the same time," she said when she heard the footsteps indicating Jon's presence. She turned to find him with a serious face. "I'm joking. No one would dare question me for leaving early."

Jon watched her for a long moment until he identified the light tone she was using. She had removed the shawl over the dress that covered her back and taken off her sandals, still looking beautiful and ethereal. The black crown on her head, however, was the detail that most caught his attention for he has never seen her wearing it before. 

"I've never seen anything like this," he confessed, trying to catch a glimpse of her eyes through the dim light that illuminated the terrace. "The way they see you, and celebrate you here is just...wondrous."

"There are a lot of people in Westeros who look up to you. I've seen it," Dany replied, feeling a strong urge to let him know that. 

_He is not aware of the way people see at him yet_ , she thought fleetingly.

"And do you enjoy it? Knowing that all those exceptions pinned on you?"

She pondered it.

"No," she admitted, "No anymore."

"Neither do I."

"Are we weighing on the burdens that tribulate us?"

He smiled feeling lighthearted. "No, we are just two people, tired and old. The crown suits you," he pointed out.

She felt flattered. 

"Where is yours?"

"At home."

_Home_ , she said to herself. As far as Daenerys knew, he had been residing in Dragonstone the latest years, but he might as well be talking about Winterfell, the Wall, or wherever he had made his home in those years. 

When Daenerys thought of home, the only thing that came to her mind was Drogon.

"I'm not surprised."

There was silence. 

"All this is yours?" He asked then, seeking to extend the light and pleasant mood between them. "The manses, the palaces..."

  
"The manse with the nine towers belonged to my husband."

"I didn't know that Dothraki Lords could own such things."

Dany laughed softly and said, "The cities used to pay them with luxuries to prevent them from sacking it."

"Until you came along and saved them all."

"There are many who think otherwise..."

"Do they know that you saved the world too?"

She raised a curious brow.

"Why should I tell them that?"

"Because you did. When no one else did."

She thought it over before answering him,  
"I used to like to talk about my victories, being able to say I overcame the hurdles that presented me along my way. But not now. Who wants to hear from a mad woman? What man wants to touch a woman who has been dead?"

"That's not..." he felt a pang of guilt and other ugly feelings. _You are not mad_.

"Anyway," she continued without allowing him to interrupt her, "That's not what I'm looking for anymore. Westeros taught me a valuable lessons. I don't need to be loved, I shouldn't dread to be feared."

"But they love you."

"They do, yes." _Some less than others_.

"And do you love them?"

"I want their welfare. Yes."

"But do you _love_ them?"

Daenerys took a deep breath. He awaited her answer with apprehension increasing in his chest.

"I don't think I can feel that anymore," she admitted, shaking her head and avoiding his gaze.

He was about to leave it there but then he remembered.

"You love Catrya."

Dany nodded without a doubt 

"How not to do it, right?"

Then they smiled at them same time and fell into a certain place of confidence. An that easiness that came with being able to admit something to the other and know that it will not be used against you.

"We're leaving in a few days," Jon reminded her.

"I know."

"Until then, would you consider my proposal?"

She looked at him sternly, the sudden movement of her arms at the nervousness deceiving her words.

"I have considered your proposal and given you oan answer already."

"What you've done is get mad."

"And should not?"

"Of course you should. But that's not considering it," Jon replied teasingly. The edge of his upper lip slightly raised.

"And do you know what that means?" She challenged him. "You said it, they love me here. Why would I leave all this to go to a land that has only rejected me and where I committed my greatest crime?"

"Because you are Daenerys Targaryen. Mother of dragons and Queen of all the places you have conquered to fulfill your vision of a better world."

The confidence with which he spoke made her heart jump and thump against her chest.

"You didn't seem to believe that when you thrust a dagger into my heart," she recalled, trying to downplay the sudden, pleasant sensation tickling her belly at hearing him talk that way of her.

"That wasn't a better world. This is." Jon walked closer, making sure he didn't overstep. "You know my words make sense," he tried to reason with her, and at the same time suppressed the rising emotion. "It wasn't right that I-"

"It doesn't matter. None of that matters," she sounded evasive.

"Yes it does. _It does_ ," Jon declared sternly. "Break the wheel. That's what you wanted. Build a more just world. You freed slaves, you eliminated those who used power to take advantage of the weakest. Thanks to you the world is now a more just place."

_Why was he doing this?_ She asked herself. _I should walk around and leave him talking to himself without turning once to see him again._

"Not what you did at King's Landing. That wasn't breaking the wheel."

She exhaled and looked away, nodding, "I've made a mistake. Every night when nightmares haunt me, I meet justice."

It hurt him to know that but he was glad that she was the person he knew she was in truth.

"You're running away from it."

"What else can I do?"

"Face it. Right your wrong." Jon took a step closer. Steel eyes watched her intently. "Build a new and better world for those left behind and hurt."

"How? How do I ask the citizens of Kings Landing to forgive me?"

"It is neither their love nor their forgiveness that you should seek. You yourself have said it, you have not needed their love to build your better world here." He paused. "And wherever you need me, I'll be there trying to compensate for my crime."

Daenerys turned around and support herself on the balustrade again. Not because she ignored his words but because they confused her. She was afraid to find his eyes cold and empty as a sign that everything he said was a sham.

Vulnerability was something she never allowed herself to have with people anymore. Maybe only with Catrya every now and then but she was just a child.

"I need you," she whispered. "If I am to build a new and better world, I need someone to be there to keep it that way when I am gone," she said, recalling Tyrion's words on the matter. "Today I told my council that your offspring would be my heirs," she confessed.

Jon blinked in puzzlement and didn't speak to for a long time.

Daenerys turned, assessing his expression. 

"Don't look at me that way. It's not like I have a choice. I don't have anyone else," Daenerys argued.

"Catrya is my heir," Jon stated.

Daenerys snorted in disagreement. "Your sister bled to death to bring her to life with the sole purpose to make it heir to the North and Winterfell."

Dany didn't know why she found herself defending Sansa Stark's actions but she was doing it. So she was considering his words.

"It doesn't sound totally unattainable, what you say. I've thought before, I have considered it plenty times before but...I've always felt too much afraid and guilty.   
I am scared to try again." She looked over at him. "That's why I sent the Old Griff to help you, because I was certain you were supposed to rule. Not Brandon. Not Tyrion. Not Harrion Karstark." She glanced back at the city walls. "But I can't keep fighting for something that is going to fade along with me."

Jon still wasn't out of his astonishment at hearing her words. He couldn't find a way to tell her he didn't want that. He did not want to be the means to an end. He wanted to be her companion and fight for her as her equal. Not like this.

But how could he demand for more? He'd failed her so greatly and still he felt owed to her. 

With that in mind, his eyes lowered to her back and to the marks on her, the ones that came from her arms and disappeared down her side toward her front. Jon found himself drawing near towards her like he was in some kind of trance, his hand tickling with the urge to run his fingertips there.

"Can I get closer?" He asked absently.

Dany nodded, believing he meant to stand next to her. As soon as she felt his cold touch on her bare back, she trembled out of surprise but didn't pull away. Her breathing quickened and the tingling grew more intense in her lower belly in response.

_It had been too long..._

"What is it?" Jon asked, tracing the marks as if they were runes. His voice sounded husky and low against the back of her neck.

She swallowed hard and closed her eyes, feeling him on her upper side.

"A witch put a spell on me, I'm not sure what it was but this...is necessary," she replied, fighting to stay calm. Her racing heartbeat rumbled against her ears. "It doesn't hurt, if you're wondering," she managed to say just as Jon was lamenting in his mind that wherever she went, she always get hurt. Feeling helpless about it.

It seemed like hours. Neither of them spoke a word. His hand slid through the fine strap of her dress that kept her breasts covered and peal it off, following the trace of the marks. On the left side.

A bit of prudence ruled her senses and Daenerys covered her breast with her left arm, though it hardly mattered since she was with her back on him. 

His hand snaked up her side to search for what she knew he was looking for.

Jon's touch went to brush the scar his knife left, which was also covered from the naked eye underneath the henna. 

Glossing over sentiments of anger and hurt, she did not anticipate she would feel so intensely at his touch. Specially considering how intimacy between them was severely damaged. 

But she had left him. It wasn't just something that he started.

"That's enough," she halted him, raising her other hand to put down his. She adjusted her dress and walked a few steps away from him. "You shouldn't have done that," she said, unable to meet his eyes. Perhaps it was more a declaration to herself. 

"I know," he replied in a hoarse voice. Shutting his eyes and turning around in shame. He'd done something so reckless and off limits that he was sure another night of dwelling in regrets awaited him.

Furthermore, the sensation of her scar still burned on his hand.

Dany tried to downplay it. After all, hadn't they been lovers? Wasn't this way for all lovers? She certainly didn't let Daario touch her this way. 

She cleared her throat and felt the urge to end it all. The hot weather starting to suffocate her.

"When I go to Dragonstone," she began, raising her eyes to meet his penetrating gaze, "I'll try."

  
His heart skipped a beat and he met her eyes, looking over shoulders.

"Daenerys..."

"For Catrya. I'm going to try for Catrya," she added quickly. Retaking that cold and regal stance that characterized her. "Good night, King Jon."

She passed him by and left him there, alone trying to weight in whatever was that transpired between them just minutes before and coming to the sole conclusion that he loved her and had never stopped doing so.


End file.
